Physics Geek

I'm going for some beer

Be back soon

Well, it's off to Denver and the GABF tomorrow morning. Three days of tasting/drinking good beer.

In my opinion, the GABF would be a great setting for a blogger get together. If anyone else is of the same mind, we could try to work something out for next year. Even if you don't like beer(HERETIC!!!), it's a lot of fun.

See y'all when I get back.

Color me surprised

Not. Really, really not.

Does anyone else notice the complete absence of someone holding a sign saying "I'm a Democrat and I'm ashamed of my party"? I guess to the MSM's way of thinking, it'd be as realistic as a Bigfoot photo.

More yummy goodness

This week's Carnival of the Recipes is baking over at Triticale's place, another fine MuNu blog. Interesting theme, too, which reminds me of a certain 1970's musical group.

Best analysis

JPod on Andrew Sullivan:

ANDREW SULLIVAN...
...is one of the most humorless people on earth, Jonah, in case you haven't been able to tell. He watches "South Park" for the politics, after all.

"Find a human"

And idea whose time has come

Check out this page. The information contained therein will make you weep. With joy. Thanks to Neal Boortz for the link.

Some good news today

The cast of Serenity have signed on for at least two sequels, assuming that the first movie does well at the box office.

And now some crappy news: I was almost giddy when I heard that bloggers would be given press credentials for a pre-release screening of Serenity. Until, of course, I remembered that the class I'm teaching this fall starts THE SAME EFFING NIGHT!!!

Does that sound bitter? If not, I didn't say it right.

Fudge truffle cheesecake

Ingredients
--------------

1 1/2 c Vanilla wafer crumbs
1/2 c Powdered sugar
1/3 c Hershey's® cocoa
1/3 c Butter or margarine; melted
2 c semi-sweet chocolate chips
24 oz Cream cheese; (3-8oz pkg), softened
14 oz sweetened condensed milk
4 Eggs
2 ts Vanilla

Directions
------------
Crust: In medium bowl, combine the crumbs, powdered sugar, cocoa and butter or margarine. Press firmly on bottom of 10-inch springform pan.

Cake: Heat oven to 300 degrees. In heavy saucepan, over very low heat, melt chips, stirring constantly. In large mixer bowl, beat cheese until fluffy. Gradually beat in sweetened condensed milk until smooth. Add melted chips and remaining ingredients; mix well.

Pour into prepared pan. Bake 1 hour and 5 minutes or until center is set. Cool: chill.

Battle of the sexes

MARRIAGE SEMINAR

While attending a Marriage Seminar dealing with communication, Tom and his wife Grace listened to the instructor, "It is essential that husbands and wives know the things that are important to each other."

He addressed the man, "Can you describe your wife's favorite flower?"

Tom leaned over, touched his wife's arm gently and whispered, "It's Pillsbury, isn't it?

The rest of the story gets rather ugly, so I'll stop right here.

CIGARETTES AND TAMPONS

A man walks into a pharmacy and wanders up and down the aisles. The sales girl notices him and asks him if she can help him. He answers that he is looking for a box of tampons for his wife. She directs him down the correct aisle. A few minutes later, he deposits a huge bag of cotton balls and a ball of string on the counter.

She says, confused, "Sir, I thought you were looking for some tampons for your wife? He answers, " You see, it's like this, yesterday, I sent my wife to the store to get me a carton of cigarettes, and she came back with a tin of tobacco and some rolling papers 'cause it's sooo-ooo--oo-ooo much cheaper.

So, I figure if I have to roll my own .......... so does she.

WIFE VS HUSBAND

A couple drove down a country road for several miles, not saying a word. An earlier discussion had led to an argument and neither of them wanted to concede their position. As they passed a barnyard of mules, goats, and pigs, the wife asked sarcastically, "Relatives of yours?"

"Yep," the husband replied, "in-laws."

WORDS

A husband read an article to his wife about how many words women use a day... 30,000 to a man's 15,000.

The wife replied, "The reason has to be because we have to repeat everything to men...

The husband then turned to his wife and asked, "What?"

World's shortest fairytale

Once upon a time, a guy asked a girl "Will you marry me?" The girl said, "NO!" And the guy lived happily ever after and went fishing, hunting and played golf a lot and drank beer and farted whenever he wanted.

THE END

And the winner is...

John Cole correctly analyzes the position of Harry Reid and finds it wanting. Excerpt:

Judge Roberts is no fire-breathing ideologue, and if the Democrats do everything they can to block his nomination, and mount a strident and contentious opposition, they are sealing their own fates. If someone like Roberts is going to get 30-40 votes against from Democrats, I see no reason why Bush doesn’t appoint a fire-breathing ideologue. Let ‘em filibuster.

If Roberts is unacceptable, the simple fact is Democrats can’t deal with a Republican appointee. Period.

I think that he's onto something here.

How to sleep at your desk and not get caught

This is pretty clever, although I think it took more effort to avoid work than to actually do it.

Assorted assholes, nothing

Glenn Reynolds? 100

Of course, you can replace "assorted assholes" with Andrew Sullivan. Excerpt:

Okay, I take it back. The dumbest statement of the week comes from Andrew Sullivan, who doesn't seem to get the difference between "today" and "yesterday" in a post from this morning criticizing something I quoted last night, but which he attributes to "today" as, I guess, evidence of my obliviousness to this morning's terror bombing in Iraq.

Sorry Andrew, but I'm not capable of precognition. On the other hand, I can read a clock. Jeez. I confess that I don't understand why Sullivan is so desirous of scoring cheap points at my expense these days, but this is pretty lame. As Jeff Goldstein put it in a different context: "Andrew Sullivan is completing his transformation into a Kos Diarist."

If you're familiar with the Puppy Blender's understated tone, you'd recognize that this is a whopper of a bitchslap, and quite deserved, too.

It's a bummer, too. Sully was the first blog that I read regularly. That is, until he went yip-yip-yip, barking at the moon, batshit insance.

Browsers of a feather...

Info about a cool new browser can be found here. Looks pretty nifty to me.

Thank John Cole for the link.

NFL follies

I've long wondered at the inability of NFL coaches to grasp the following concept: when it's late in the game and you're down by multiples of 7 points, a field goal, even a successful one, is pointless because-surprise!- you still need a touchdown. Invariably, teams that kick this less than useless field goal to shrink the margin to the you-still-need-a-touchdown-jagoff point end up losing. Take last year's playoff game between the Patriots and the Steelers. New England had jumped out to a buge lead, but Pittsburgh had closed to within 14 points and had the ball at the New England 2 yard line. Almost an entire quarter remained to played and the crowd is going beserk. Going for it is the only intelligent decision, since you're two scores behind and a field goal leaves you, uh, still two scores behind. Besides, if they'd failed, New England would have been pinned at their own 2-yard line, meaning that you're defense would be in a great position to make a play. Instead, Pittsburgh wussed out and kicked, at which point I turned off the television; the outcome had already been decided.

On to the recent past, where... oh heck, I'll let TMQ fill you in:

Buck-Buck-Brawckkkkkkk: Trailing 17-10, the Minnesota Vikings faced fourth-and-goal on the Tampa 4 with 6:17 remaining and the Metrodome crowd roaring at experimental refrigerator decibel levels. ( What's that?) A touchdown ties the game; a missed fourth-and-goal try leaves the visitors pinned against their end zone amidst deafening noise; a field goal means you've still got to score a touchdown. Go for it! TMQ's immutable law: Kick Early, Go For It Late. Now it's late, go for it! In trots the field-goal unit, and the Vikings end up losing. (Note: when it's still early, kick. In the third quarter, Washington faced fourth-and-goal on the Chicago 1, trailing 7-6. Joe Gibbs sent in the field-goal unit as the hometown crowd booed, and the figgie proved the winning points.)

Geeky post of the day

Are you, like me, either unable to afford Tivo or your cable company's DVR? Sure, the players are now pretty cheap, but the service is still pricey. Suppose that you could build your own personal video recorder(PVR) on a PC that will record digital broadcast signals, and can be scheduled to record your favorite programs. Would that be of interest to you? If so, go here to find out how to do it. Excerpt:

Q: Will I need to upgrade my PC to work as a digital TV PCR?
A: A fairly recent one, with at least a 2-Ghz Pentium 4 or Athlon 2800+ processor or higher, at least 512MB of RAM, and an 80GB or bigger hard drive will probably be fine. For our step-by-step guide, we used a 2.6-GHz Pentium 4 system with 1GB of DDR333 RAM, but an even faster processor would have made some things (such as converting the recorded files to different resolutions) quicker and easier. ATI recommends at least a 1.2-GHz processor and 256MB of memory for its HDTV Wonder card, but frankly, that's a bit low.
...
Q: What kind of software will I need to build the digital TV PVR?
A: For this step-by-step, we chose to use KnoppMyth, a combination of Knoppix Linux and the Linux PVR software MythTV. It's the simplest way we've found to build a dedicated digital TV PVR, and MythTV has a huge range of features: It can search for programs by title, actor or description, read RSS news and weather feeds, show your digital photos, and play internet radio stations. Plus, KnoppMyth installs from a single CD, so you don't need to know Linux to install and run it.

Q: I'm not sure I'm ready to build a dedicated Linux box to record digital TV. Is there a Windows alternative?
A: Yes. ATI includes software with its HDTV Wonder card that can view and record digital TV signals, including HDTV ones. You can schedule recordings and pause live TV; the card also includes an analog TV tuner. We've tested it and found it was able to record digital TV signals with relative ease, although it did require a fairly fast PC to be able to record and play back HD video. Another alternative is the AccessDTV Digital Media Receiver, a PCI card that includes software that can record and display digital TV in Windows. We haven't reviewed this device, though.

I have a couple of aging PC's sitting around my house that I've been meaning to tinker with, and this type of project will put them to good use. PVR, here I come.

It's that time of year again

Yes, it's "show me the boobies!" day again, better known as Harvey's birthday. Well, I did supply some nice images last year, as well as a little dessert this year, but I'm no piker. Harvey wants boobies, he's gonna get 'em.

Just so no one gets fired by accidentally opening some NSFW images, I'm putting everything in the extended entry.

Got mead?

A mead competition is upcoming. I've reprinted the ad from here in full:

If you've got mead, prepare to enter the 1st annual Valhalla - The Meading of Life !
Mead-Only Competition to be held Saturday, October 15 at the Mt. Pleasant Café 311 W. Mt. Pleasant Ave in Philadelphia, 19119 . This competition will judge meads in BJCP categories 24--traditional meads, 25--melomel and 26--other mead. One entry per subcategory per entrant, with a $5 per entry fee. The equivalent of at least 3 12-ounce bottles is required for judging, although bottle size and shape are not restricted. No identifying markings however can appear on the bottles. Any standard competition entry from may be used. It is the responsibility of the
entrant to properly identify the category and sub-category based on the
2004 BJCP Style Guidelines.

Meads may be mailed or dropped off at Home Sweet Homebrew, 2008 Sansom
Street, Philadelphia, PA 19103 by Friday, October 7th. Additional drop off
locations include Keystone Homebrew locations and Iron Hill Brewery and
Restaurant in West Chester, PA.

The competition would like to encourage knowledgeable mead judges to
commit to judging this event. Judges will receive breakfast and lunch.

The judging will take place from 9am to 1pm. Awards will be given out beginning at 1:30. There will also be a tasting with numerous commercial meads as well as the remainder of the meads from the competition following the judging. Following the competition there will be 2 seatings for a Medieval dinner at 4 and 7pm, reservations required call 215-242-1500 to make them.

Suzanne McMurphy, Competition Organizer
David Houseman, Judge Coordinator
Vince Galet, Asst. Competition Organize

Head of household

When everybody on earth was dead and waiting to enter Paradise, God appeared and said, "I want the men to make two lines. One line for the men who were true heads of their household and the other line for the men who were dominated by their women. I want all the women to report to St Peter."

Soon, the women were gone and there were two lines of men. The line of the men who were dominated by their wives was 100 miles long, and in the line of men who truly were heads of their household, there was only one man.

God said, "You men should be ashamed of yourselves. I created you to be the head of your household. You have been disobedient and not fulfilled your purpose. I told you to be the spiritual leader in your family. Of all of you only one obeyed. Learn from him. Tell them, my son, how did you manage to be the only one in this line?"

The man replied, "I don't know, my wife told me to stand here."

Is it live, or is it Memorex?

Think that you're pretty good at know what's an Urban Legend and what's real? Take this quiz and find out. No fair using Google, A9, or any other search engine.

For the record, I missed two.

What planet are they from?

Editorial writers for my local paper, the Times-Dispatch, asked what planet George Bush was from for stating that the levee breach wasn't anticipated. Uh, it wasn't. Maybe thw opinion pundits are from the planet Outofthinairea, or possible Madeitupbecauseitsoundsgoodurn.

Appears to be only in the print edition for yesterday.

More yummy goodness

This week's Carnival of the Recipes is at a full, roiling boil over at Curmudgeonry. Stop by and check out Jordana's roundup.

Resolving a technical issue

It might be a while before I can answer my email.

Quote of the day

And it's from James Taranto:

"What the American people have seen is this incredible disparity in which those people who had cars and money got out and those people who were impoverished died."--Ted Kennedy on Hurricane Katrina

""--Mary Jo Kopechne on Hurricane Katrina

Too much time on your hands

That's the only explanantion that I can find for this.

Looks like more than a 3-hour tour

Bob Denver has passed away. Bummer.

Some advice

Don't piss off Moxie

My contempt for Sean Penn's latest ill-fated photo-op was so profound that I simply couldn't bring myself to blog about it. Fortunately, Moxie is able express her distaste for Madonna's former plaything quite forcefully.

Best analysis that you will see

To no one's surprise, it's from Bill Whittle. Excerpt:

Because to say we are responsible for the terrorists in the world is a way to say we can control this wolf. If we believe we made him, then that means we control him. We can unmake him. Such a worldview appeals to the left, because it gives them Godlike Mental Powers. All we have to do is act differently and he will go away. It’s complete moral cowardice, of course – but it’s understandable cowardice. It’s denial, because if all the sins are ours then all we must do is repent and the wolf will go away.

But that’s not what the wolf says. The wolf is not interested in what we do. He does not spare little lambs because they rub up against his leg and make cooing sounds. The wolf wants to swallow us whole. He wants the fight. He wants the war and the conflict. And he will keep on huffing and puffing until one of three things happen: We show him our throat, for him to rip out; or we convert to Islam and become part of his Caliphate; or we head out into the forest with a shotgun and blow his fucking head off.

I made my decision by about 8:00 eastern on September 11th, 2001. I have never regretted it.

It takes courage to fight oncoming storms. Courage.

Courage isn’t free. It is taught, taught by certain tribes who have been around enough and seen enough incoming storms to know what one looks like. And I think the people of this nation, and those of New Orleans, specifically, desire and deserve some fundamental lessons in courage.

Because we are going to need it.

Let me reiterate: Bill Whittle is a national treasure. Go read it all. Now.