The evils of government

"The evils of government are directly proportional
to the tolerance of the people."
- Frank Kent

Hot Chili Jail Break

Here's a muy caliente! story:

       Eighteen selfish Sumatran prisoners stormed out of a
prison by spraying chili water in the guards' eyes;
thus unwittingly condemning the rest of the prisonners
to forever eating bland food. Now that's a harsh sentence.
       My lunch today was enlived by a few precious drops
of some fiery chili sauce, homegrown and homemade by
a coworker's mother-in-law from Trinidad.
       No more fiery hot chili!? That's hell.

Halloween in August

Only about 2
months till
HALLOWEEN.
It's never too
early to start
organizing and
thinking about
costumes.
I think I found
mine!

After serving
up shots all
night, some
might start to
see me like
in this picture...

Meet you in Zzyzx

Founded in the Mohave desert by some wacko in the mid 40's.
That'll score ya a minimum of 84 points in scrabble!

Hamza El Din 1929 - 2006

Hamza El Din passed away a
few weeks ago.

He was a grand master of
subtlety, understatement,
and quiet intensity.

Witnessing him perform
live was a spiritual blessing
I feel immensely fortunate
to have seen him twice.

He lives on in our memories
and through his marvellous
recordings. "A Wish" is a
quintessential world music
testament.

Like Miles Davis or great bluesmen, Hamza's gift to the world
was hypnoticly heartfelt music: simple, eloquent proof that
less can be so much more.

The comfort that we'll always have his music to accompany us
helps alleviate the great sadness of his passing.

Here's to Hamza.
Let the notes speak for themselves.



Obituaries: Guardian, NYTimes

Summer Grillin'

"i loves meself some barbecue,
and don't forget that coleslaw too"

Answer to the Simmah

There once was a prankster
by the name SimSimmah.
Cobwebs ailed the poor sir
but he loved a wee snigger.




His peers he liked to diss
spewing quips of a cur.
The meat of his last slur:
scrotum elephantiasis

Photos of a grand hunk
he flashed, the gadfly.
Here lays plain my reply:
SimSinnah, eat my trunk

HP Memory Spot Chip

This itsy bitsy speck is a chip from HP which contains memory,
a modem, an antenna and also a microprocessor for kicks.

It measures 2-4mm square and currently holds up to 512k of data.
Wireless data transfert rates are up to 10 megabits/sec,
mucho faster than the current standards for Bluetooth or RFID tags.
And best of all, no battery is required since devices communicating
with the chip can provide power by induction.

A Recovery Day

It was fairly flat day today for the 18th stage of Le Tour de France.
And FLandis said it was a nice little "recovery day" for him
after his crazy victory yesterday, 5"42 ahead of anyone else.
Just a little 197km stroll at an average of 28 mph to relax the legs, ya know.

Wait for it....

Hmmmm.... 5 gallons of
homebrew slowly
fermenting and
macerating.....
That's close to 20 gallons
of beer that i loaded with
sour cherry juice, fresh
sour cherries, jars of sour
cherries and dried sour
cherries. Can you guess
the flavor? Should be
ready for bottling in a
couple months then
maybe another month
at least of maturing.
Waiting is the hardest part.

Fun with Maps

hmmm... thirsty...

Saluting a Living Legend

You can choose to click away to give the Zizou
to the foul-mouthed Materazzis or let them slide...

Jah Foreign Accent Syndrome, mon

A 60-year-old woman wakes up
after a stroke speaking with a
Jamaican accent.

After a brain injury, her
distinctive Newcastle accent has
been replaced by a mixture of
Jamaican, French Canadian and
Slovakian accents.

Dat poo' ooman, har inna wan jam mon.

"Researchers at Oxford University have found that patients
with Foreign Accent Syndrome have suffered damage to tiny
areas of the brain that affect speech.

The result is often a drawing out or clipping of the vowels that
mimic the accent of a particular country, such as Spain or France,
even though the sufferer has limited exposure to that accent.

The syndrome was first identified during World War II, when
a Norwegian woman suffered shrapnel damage to her brain.
She developed a strong German accent, which led to her being
ostracised by her community." BBC News

Ants Use Internal Pedometer to Measure Distance

For my first college presentation, I learned about
desert ants using the sun's polarized light to keep their bearings.

When they leave their nest, they wander all over the place
to look for food, then they amazingly head back home
in the most direct straight line.












The sky can help them keep track of direction
but not of distance. According to a new study,
involving eeeeksperiments where their legs
were lenghened or amputated, these ants keep
track of distance by counting the number of steps
they took. impressive.

Here's the full BBC story.

Oxymoronic

On my way back from lunch carpooling with a coworker
yesterday - yes i should have packed a lunch -
I saw this puzzling spectacle:
an Escalade carrying two bicycles.

The 2005 Cadillac Escalade AWD retails for more than
50K and has a V8 engine delivering 345 hp that are really
vital in this ruthless urban jungle that the DC area is.
Its optimistic EPA mileage estimate is 13/17 mpg.
Even driving like I do, i get 28mpg in my 1.7l 170hp
13 year old 3 door coupe.

Last week there was sobering report from an environmental
group which has worked with McDonald's and FedEx.
A study by Environmental Defense has
determined that American automobiles are responsible for
nearly half of the greenhouse gases emitted by cars globally
although they constitute only 30 percent of the world’s autos.
The authors argued that cars in the U.S. are driven
more miles, have lower fuel economy requirements and use
fuel with more carbon than in most other countries.

As individuals, we can at least address 2 of these factors.
-drive less and smarter
-buy more fuel efficient vehicules.

And if you're not rich enough to buy a new hybrid car
and love your old trusty reasonably efficient and fun wheels,
just bitch about it like me, there'll be enough of us eventually.

Somalia Defeats Rwanda To Win Third-World Cup

June 29, 2006 | Onion Sports

KHARTOUM, SUDAN—The host city of the 2006
Developing Nations Football Championship erupted
in cheers that nearly drowned out the cries of the
starving and wounded Tuesday when the underdog
Somali side, playing four down due to injuries and
landmines, outlasted the more experienced if
disease-ridden Rwandans 1-0 to win the inaugural
Third-World Cup.

Full damn good story here.

Futebol Time

You know things are alright at work when people
take a break to watch the World Cup. including my boss.
We even had a true Brazilian sporting her country's
colors and screaming at the TV in Portuguese.
It's Futebol Time-inho!

Frolf und Pétanque

I just discovered the new sport of FROLF!
aka disc golf or Frisbee golf.
Admire Diet's perfect form on Bluemont park's
spider tree while Petra looks on utterly ravished.















It's a blast of a relaxing, light outdoors activity.
Except of course when like me you're a sucky
beginner and lose a disc in the poison ivy bushes.
That disc is still somewhere out there and my
blisters are only healing now after a couple weeks.
But you know i went right back out there for
some more of that FROLF!















Any sport which you can practice with a beverage in
hand is a quality activity. Take for instance the storied
yet, outside of the ol' continent, completely obscure
sport of pétanque.

This is an ol' pix with Bobska from the summer of 1997
at the bottom of Death Valley. Sure it was hot enough
to fry an egg on the hood of our car but a cooling wind
and a steady supply of pastis-mint cocktails kept us going.
Plus who could possibly pass up on that perfect
playing surface of the valley bottom.

CrouchMonkey

At 6'7" (200.66 cm) Peter Crouch on the English national team
is one lanky gangly fellow. At the 44th minute of a then scoreless
game against Trinidad-and-Tobago today, he completely missed
a solid center by Beckam. And he sure looked funny blowing it,
in a barrel of monkeys kind of way.

You be the judge:

Rule of Engagement

Last night we lost our indoor soccer game against Felina.
It wasn't that they were a tougher team like we thought,
It's just that many of our guys just didn't show.

We played one guy short and after an injury we were
2 short. Yet we still managed to lose only by 5-9.
Knowing we should have won with our full roster
only stings more.

But the excitement for the night was on the field
next to us. The Brazilian and Salvadorean teams
who are also in our league were duking it out.
Throughout their game we could hear the very loud
supporters for both teams. Then hell broke loose
and it escalated into a full blown brawl. Their supporters
stormed the field, shirts came off in some kind of
fighting intimidation attempt, punches flew everywhere.
I saw 2 bloodied Brazilian guys limping out off the field.
They were outnumbered by the smaller and
more verocious Salvadorians.
















One the guys on our team who grew up tough
in South Carolina likes to say that you just don't pick
a fight with someone who is poorer that you.