The Ekpyrotic Universe

I walked over to the bank with my co-worker to get a breath of fresh air and we were lucky enough to catch the 3:00 performance of Crazy People on the Street

It all started when a woman, whether drunk or otherwise "not right in the head" was yelling at some black teenagers a few benches away. They ignored her until she "used the N word". Then they started yelling back. She started yelling that she would fight the three of them. To their credit, they declined this simply choosing to yell at her a little more. Then another woman, who didn't seem to be with any of the current participants, came over and pushed the yelling woman.

The yelling woman pushed back and started yelling at this woman instead. The woman who came over to push this woman then left while the other woman yelled at her. A few seconds later, two white guys, one large, one medium sized, seemingly unrelated to anyone who's been involved so far walk over to the yelling woman. They and another person or two swirl around one-another until yet another medium sized white guy walks quickly over from the direction of the blakc youths and punches the other meduim sized white guy in the face.

The punchee falls to the ground, the puncher whirls 180 degrees and walks away past the black youths who have been ignoring the whole thing since the yelling woman stopped yelling at them. The punchee gets up, is handed a backpack from the large guy and puts it on and then the two of them walk quickly away on a path that is an acute angle to the puncher, taking them to a different block. The punchee yells "I'm calling the cops" to no-one in particular and it is all over.

I'd love for this to all be part of some elaborate sting or spy operation, but I think it was just "Crazy People in Copley"

Now I can't watch Jim Carrey movies any more

I'd never been a huge fan, but thought he was occasionally good. Maybe if there's anything I really feel I need to see I can bittorrent it or something. I'll have to figure out how to do that, but I'm sure I have plenty of knowledgeable friends who can show me.

We just had a fire in our kitchen here at work. Someone apparently stored their store-bought cupcakes in the over, plastic container and all. Someone else went in and turned on the over to warm it up to cook a lasagna. Hilarity ensued. The plastic melted and caught fire, there's smoke everywhere. My cube is unfortunately in the smokey area. Now the windows and doors are open and there's a fan right outside my office. I'm cold.

On the other side of the wall that the stove is on? Our servers. Genius placement.

Though the fire was put out promptly the fire department still showed up.

When I was a kid I had a toy that was essentially plastic girders and a heating element and you would melt the girders and stick them together to build things. That is what the office smells like now.

Anyone else have that toy? That could not have been good for my lungs when I was a kid...

I was listening to NPR on my way to get lunch. They were talking about Michael Chrichton, who is dead. I think he was a mostly hack writer who wrote SF adventure stories. They were playing him up as a great writer who popularized science.

One of the babblers they had on, in extolling Chrichton, said "There's a lot of bad Science Fiction out there", this being the first time they're deigned to say the words "Science Fiction" and goes on to give the examples of Volcano and The Core.

I think is says quite a bit about Crichton if that's what you have to resort to to make him look good. Also, the same babbler then said "He demonstrated how dinosaurs could be cloned from ancient DNA, though it couldn't really work that way." So Crichton is just as ridiculous as the Volcano, the biggest flaw of which according to the babbler was that it had a Volcano appear where it couldn't.

I hate when they denigrate SF and extol a "mainstream" author for poorly doing what SF authors do well and hold up movies as typical SF.

This morning I heard a story on NPR about an ex-Los Alamos employee who quit an became an anti-nuke activist in 1969. In 1980 he opened a store called the Black Hole where he primarily sells surplus Engineering and Scientific equipment from Los Alamos.

Or doesn't sell, really. He runs it like an Army-Navy store and only manages to sell 1% of what he buys at the surplus auctions. He apparently has tons of scientific equipment, in great condition, some like new, sitting in a warehouse and his store. Refractometers, Centerfuges, Vaccum Butterfly valves, Oscilloscopes, Geiger counters, and so on.

I thought "Hey, you know who could use this stuff? Universities! It'd be cheaper than what they normally get and they usually operate under tight budgets."

I then thought "You know who's been telling me he occasionally needs new or replacement equipment? jeffwik."

I just wanted to mention it in case any of you are connected to science departments at your universities.

Or if any of you wanted to start a business buying this stuff from that guy and selling it to universities.

This morning on NPR there was a story about San Francisco. SF is a "sanctuary city". In other words, they don't automatically send every illegal they come across to the Feds for deportation. There was a protest and counter-protest there yesterday, described in the story teaser as a "clash", despite the protest being peaceful, though loud.

On the one side you had hundreds of people from immigrant's rights groups, on the other you had a dozen "Minutemen". You know about the "Minutemen", the idiots who have taken it upon themselves to "patrol" the border with Mexico.

The underlying cause for this appearance by the Asshats, sorry, the Minutemen, was a crime committed by an illegal immigrant. The immigrant in question is a minor who had already been arrested several times for violent crimes. The then committed a triple murder in a drive-by, using an AK-47. Horrible? Yes. Worthy of prison and/or deportation? Sure. However the underlying cause of this crime was not that he was an immigrant or an illegal immigrant.

It isn't as though no American citizen (of any race you care to choose) has ever committed murder. Surely no legal citizen has ever joined a gang or killed someone with a gun or performed a drive-by. I mean, if it weren't for the illegals, there'd be no gun violence or crime in the USA at all!

Using this crime as a prop for their xenophobic, racist crusade makes about as much sense as blaming the British for shipwrecks. It is a complete disconnect, but since so much of this country is completely irrational, they make the connection and get people to agree with them.

This article on how their poll showed pet owners prefer McCain is a good example of what's wrong with American political reporting. They are desperate to find something that shows McCain is competitive this year. Despite Obama's lead in other polls, they find one that shows a McCain lead, correlate it with the fact that most households have pets and ta-dah, McCain is the favorite to win.
What a load of shit. This is the best they can do?

From democraticunderground.com

Dino Rossi, Republican candidate for governor of Washington, illustrated the depths that the Republican party has sunk to last week when he announced that he will be identified as a member of the "G.O.P. Party" on the ballot this fall

That's right, he'll be identified as a member of the Grand Old Party Party. Their meetings will be held at DSW Shoes.