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September 29, 2005

Books are our friends

While in Denver, Ted was asking me to write out a list of books I've read recently, so here it goes, in no particular order.

Stiff: The curious lives of human cadavers - I like to stick in non-fiction every once in a while. This was a good and interesting book, but don't attempt it if you're squeamish.

I, Robot (audio) - Several great short stories held together by a loose frame, Isaac Asimov is a genius. I haven't seen the movie yet, but I'm curious as to how they did it.

Dragonlance (the three central books) - I'm always a sucker for fantasy novels and these are no exception. If you like the genre you must read these.

Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince - I reread books 4 and 5 in preparation. Though Goblet of Fire is still my favorite, Book 6 did not disappoint.

Phantom of the Opera (audio) - I loved the musical when I saw it in NYC a couple years ago and the book is great as well, a haunting mystery. The names were a little hard to keep straight as they were all French but perhaps that is because I was listening to it instead of reading it.

5 People You Meet in Heaven (audio) - This was on the top sellers list for a while but I wasn't all that impressed with it. It was too sappy and feel goody, also it dragged on a bit which is saying a lot for an audio book.

A Hat Full of Sky (audio) - Cute, light, children's fantasy book, though it's quite long. Terry Pratchett is a fun writer and any of his books would be good to read to your kids.

The Moon is a Harsh Mistress - Takes a couple chapters to get into the dialog but a great scifi classic none the less. I love it when authors make up their own language, dialect or slang. What I liked the best about this book was all the references made to Australian idiosyncrasies (for those of you who aren't familiar with the book, it takes place on a Lunar penal colony).

Darwin's Radio (audio) - I loved the mix of evolutionary theory, archaic anthropology and hard core genetics in this book. The characters were a little lacking however.

Me Talk Pretty One Day (audio) - Funny and very sarcastic, though it could be a little whinny at times. The audio is read by the author himself and probably adds a bit to the story.

Currently reading:
Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell - Tom recommended this to me and I'm about a third of the way through it. It's great so far but hard to explain what it's about without making it sound completely stupid.

Next on my list:
A Breath of Snow and Ashes - The latest in the Outlander series, it came out two days ago. Since, it's been several years since I read the last one, though, I may have to reread that first.
Biohazard - This was written by one of my coworkers professors. She says he's really neat and his life has been just amazing.
In Gods We Trust - I came across this the other day on Amazon and it looks intriguing, also, I haven't read an anthro book in a while.

If you have any good books to recommend let me know! I need something to put between those two upcoming non-fiction books.

September 27, 2005

Interesting and possibly scary

It's been a long time since I looked at Dienekes' Anthro blog but after coming across a couple interesting Anthro books on Amazon this morning I thought I'd see what Dienekes was up to.

Apparently, things aren't looking so good for left-handed women. According to this article left-handed women are over twice as likely to develope pre-menopausal breast cancer than their right-handed counterparts. This seems to be attributed to in-womb conditions such as hormone levels. Interestingly, homosexuality in both men and women has also been linked to similar differences inutero. And, it's been observed that there is a higher percentage of left-handers in homosexual populations.

Keep in mind the study doesn't say anything about any linkage between left-handedness and post-menopausal breast cancer.

"Missed it by that much"

I was sad to hear on the radio this morning that Don Adams a.k.a. Maxwell Smart, died this Sunday. I grew up watching Get Smart reruns on Nick at Night and pulled my first ever all nighter at a friend's house watching a Get Smart marathon. One of the first spy spoofs, Get Smart was wacky and hilarious and you can find references to it in almost every spy spoof movie since.

1. Shoe Phone - according to this article, it was the first ever cell phone (not that it worked) and I believe that they have the prop on permanent display at the Spy Museum here in DC. It's a classic.
2. Cone of Silence - One of the stupidest recurring gimmicks of any TV series I've ever seen. Max would always insist that the cone of silence be used when discussing top secret information, the problem was that the people in the cone of silence couldn't hear each other either which made for a very exasperated Chief.
3. Opening credits - Great song, great visual sequence. The camera follows Max as he enters Control headquarters.
4. Agent 99's lack of a real name - As far as I know her real name is never once mentioned in the series, and Max who ends up marrying her near the end of the series still only knows her as Agent 99.
5. Kaos vs. Control - I just loved the names of the two feuding agencies. And the recurring line that went something like "Zis is Kaos, ve don't _____ here!"


"There are no holidays in the fight against evil."
~Don Adams as Agent 86

September 22, 2005

Halfbaked=Heaven

How good does this look! I saw one of these yesterday and haven't been able to stop thinking about it. Next time I go to the Deli across the street I'm getting one.


September 21, 2005

Trippin' Denver Style

Last weekend Brian and I flew out to Denver to visit family, look at the city and to interview for a possible job. Unfortunately, the interview fell through since they hired someone else for the position, ah well. It would have been a cool job but since I'm not planning on moving out there right away, I doubt I would have gotten it. It would have been nice to interview anyway considering I've only had one interview ever, if you can call it an interview.

A major setback was the fact that Brian was sick as a dog for almost the entire trip. It pretty much sucked for him since he doesn't like to drink when he's feeling so bad and most of our time there was taken up with drinking activities: Coors Brewery tour, Redstone Meadery tour and Octoberfest. Poor guy :(

Otherwise the trip was great fun. I got to catch up with Kim, Ted and my cousin Rick as well as play with DJ who has grown into an 8.5 month old drooling machine! I'm amazed he doesn't dehydrate himself since Denver is so dry. He's a really happy baby (most of the time) and the type that strangers just have to come up and coo at. He's going to be a terror when he learns to crawl sufficiently.

This morning a confused coworker sent me this link. After reading the article, though, I'm not all that surprised. In absence of a gun culture, the UK has a thriving knife culture. Edinburgh isn't as bad as Glasgow but I was definitely told by friends not to walk alone at night in certain parts of the city. Also, the Scots like their drink and they get very rowdy after professional sporting events. I'm guessing most of the violent assaults are either alcohol or football (read soccer for us Americans) related and rarely fatal. For most of the time I was in Scotland, however, I was blissfully unaware and unaffected by this sort of violence. I never made it to a football match and thus never saw football hooligans in action and I usually went out for drinks with friends in the more crowded areas of the city taking a cab home if we stayed out late. This was why I got such a shock when on the night after my last day of work one of my friends, Abby, got headbutted in the middle of a bar by some random female nutcase. The woman was obviously trying to start a fight but Abby was so surprised by the sudden attack that she walked away still trying to figure out what had just happened. The rest of us after realizing what had happened took Abby outside and got her to describe the woman to the bouncers, who were called away in the middle of the description to stop a brawl that had suddenly erupted in the bar. We found out later that the woman had come to the bar with several drunken guys who were also trying to pick fights, with a bit more success. I also found out that what had happened to Abby was called a Glasgow Kiss.

Anyway, thinking of violence in cities made me curious about how Denver stacked up to Washington, DC. What I found was not incredibly surprising.































City, 2002Crime
index,
total
Murder Forcible
rape
Robbery Aggravated
assault
Burglary Larceny-
theft
Motor
vehicle
theft
Washington, DC7,767.945.945.9653.5850.2905.13,661.41,605.9
Denver, Colo.5,511.18.855.2205.0265.21,049.62,646.71,280.7


I was a little surprised to find that Denver was placed not far below Washington in the list of cities ranked by population size. Denver is ranked 25th with 554,636 by the 2000 census, while DC is ranked 21st with 572,059. And Denver is growing rapidly. The cost of living in Denver is quite a bit lower than DC mostly due to housing costs. According to this, the cost of housing in Denver is 110.6 and in DC it's 201.2, I have no idea what these numbers refer to but that does seem to be a significant difference. Sadly, moving to Denver will not alleviate my traffic woes. According to this Denver ranks above DC in traffic congestion. Coming from DC, I can not believe this is true. I just don't trust the numbers. After driving around the Denver area a couple times during rush hour I didn't see anything that came close to the beltway at rush hour. Yes, the road going south as we went north to the airport on monday looked pretty bad but it was still moving, which is more than I can say for certain parts of 66. Ah well, I guess I'll find out about Denver traffic sooner or later.

September 14, 2005

Incan Menagerie

My coworker, Steve, recently returned (mostly intact) from a trip to Machu Picchu. We had a little impromptu slide show in the lunch room which nicely doubled the length of my lunch "hour", thanks Steve! All photos courtesy of Steve and his girlfriend Catherine.



The southern hemisphere has got us beat when it comes to exotic birds and rodents of unusual size.

(These are capybara in case the picture is too dark.)

However, I must say that when it comes to indigenous dogs, Australia is up to par with it's Dingos, much cuter than Coyotes, but not quite as cool as Arctic Wolves. South America, however, is way way way behind.

Naked dogs! Gross! You may already know about my dislike for the naked mole rat. As far as I'm concerned the only hairless mammals should be humans or water dwelling.

Anyway, here is the necessary Llama picture.

Apparently, Llamas got their name because of a misunderstanding. Similar to how the Kangaroo got it's name. The Spaniards on seeing Llamas for the first time asked the locals what they are called, "como se llama?" and the Indians, having no idea what was going on, simply repeated the last word. The story I heard, while in Australia, was that 'Kangaroo', in the language of the aboriginal tribe near Sydney meant "Go away" or something less nice.

A mobile space transmitter?



Ok, so I realize that this is a bad picture but can anyone tell me why one car really needs three giant antenna? I mean assuming that this car isn't an under cover police car parked at the office building across the street from mine. What are they for?

September 06, 2005

It's my Birthday and I'll crash if I want to

Another BDay, another successful trip to VaBeach! Naomi and I drove down Friday night, amazingly not hitting much traffic at all, the upside to ridiculously high gas prices. Saturday was spent at the Expo and the beach and visiting with Brian's family, his sister made a rockin' pre-race night curry. Admittedly, I was a little concerned about eating curry the night before a race but it turned out wonderfully. Sunday morning was the half marathon. Brian and I came in at 1:48, he beat me by one second and was one second away from getting his name in the paper the next day for being in the top 500 runners. If he hadn't spent the last 3 or so miles trying to keep me on pace he would have been in there easily, but I like to think he didn't mind TOO much. Anyway, thank you Brian, now let's just hope I can sort out what a Port-a-jon is for before the marathon. 1:48 puts us right on track for our 3:40 marathon goal, we just need to do another one of those, keeping up the same pace, easy right? Uh huh, sure, no problem.

The rest of the day was spent relaxing and attempting to recover before partying for Becca's and my birthday that night. Naomi, Brian and I started drinking in the room at about 4:30 and I was nice and toasty by the time we made it to Mahi Mah's for dinner. It was very very yummy, sushi, fried oysters and tuna with some really good sauce on it. We had to wait for our table for about an hour and a half, and Naomi and Brian made the mistake of allowing me to order the first round of drinks. I got Naomi's margarita ok but unfortunately I ordered Manhattans for Brian and I by mistake, oops. You may wonder how it was I managed to order Manhattans by mistake, and if you do, you've obviously never been out drinking with me.

After dinner was the Journey concert, which was great fun, lots of good sing-a-long swaying songs on the beach on a perfect late summer night. Afterwards, Becca and Patrick decided to go walk on the beach and the rest of us piled into Amanda's car to go to a bar. Sadly, we gave up after 20 minutes of trying to get drinks and decided to try another bar, by this time, however, Brian and I were both about to fall asleep on our feet so we wussed out and made the 17 block walk back to the hotel instead, where we promptly crashed. I guess I'm just getting old, so sad.

Anyway, thanks to everyone that came and cheered us on, and who helped Becca and I celebrate!

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