Thane Plambeck

Fox News poster

Ein Volk, Ein Reich, Ein Fuehrer, Ein Newschannel: FOXNEWS

Comic Art

Comic Art

Ilyumzhinov

Chess City, Dubai

Some more ways to feel good about Bush winning the election

1. Think on geological timescales.

2. Recall all the times things looked bad, then turned out good. Or when they seemed to be good, but were in fact bad.

3. Petite Syrah.

4. Decide that Teresa Heinz Kerry must be an anagram for something evil. [YE ERR: THE ARK IS ZEN, maybe?]

5. Learn macrame, kick boxing, or the ferns of California.

6. Exercise all the time.

7. Effect change locally, perhaps by doing the dishes, or cleaning the catbox.

8. Be thankful no Kerry signage remains to be removed from cars, or front lawns.

9. Schadenfreude: Bush is going to have a horrible second term, and it's going to be fun to watch the world blow up. Remain confident I won't be caught up in it myself.

10. Cryptic crosswords.

Road to Reality

I talked to Tom Rodgers today on the phone and he told me about this new book by Roger Penrose, apparently not planned for release in the US until 2005, but already available in the UK (that's amazon.co.uk in the link).

It's over 1000 pages.

That's a reality check. If I get it, I'll put it underneath my copy of Misner, Thorne and Wheeler's Gravitation.

Some ways to feel good about Bush winning the election

1. Move to New Zealand

2. Have an abiding, irrational faith in the collective wisdom of the good people of the United States.

3. Watch more Fox News.

4. Recall Clinton's disappointing final four years. Project negative images onto Kerry.

5. Withdraw from worldly concerns, ignoring the trouble. Eat good, organic vegetables. Study Buddhism.

6. Baseball.

7. Mathematics.

8. Physics.

9. Cancel subscription to New York Times.

10. Cancel subscription to The Nation.

Chetrooper

Advice to a six- and nine-year-old who wouldn't eat their dinner

"Eat it, don't critique it."

1 pm: Giants game

It ended up being a beautiful day at the Giants game. No sign of rain at all.

We sat almost at the top of the stadium, behind home plate, and in the shade.

The Giants won, 4-2. Barry Bonds did not start, but pinch hit in the eighth (and was intentionally walked). The minivan was almost at full capacity for the drive home.

A new flavor

I've got a better, more descriptive term for how these taste:

BAD SATSUMA

10am: rain in SF

So—go to the Giants game at 1pm, or not?

Benihana birthday

Three Dimensional Printing

Create "unmachinable" geometry—Build the impossible

Prometal

Two nights too early

We have Giants tickets for Sunday (two days from now), and Owen was hoping Barry Bonds would hit his 700th home run then. Bonds had 699 going into tonight's game, with the Padres. Owen was listening to it on the radio. The homerun came the 4th.

Owen wasn't pleased.

Blue Serge

Original release date: March 4, 1956

No warring elves or interminable quests, please

The Thackery T. Lambshead Pocket Guide to Eccentric & Discredited Diseases

From Publisher's Weekly:

The talented and prolific VanderMeer (Veniss Underground) and co-editor Roberts have here created perhaps the oddest theme anthology in the history of fantasy literature. The heavily illustrated volume does exactly what its title implies, collecting short, fictional medical descriptions of such diseases as Ballistic Organ Syndrome, Delusions of Universal Grandeur and Razornail Bone Rot. This is on the whole an amazing book. Not for the faint of heart, the easily shocked or those who see fantasy fiction primarily in terms of warring elves and interminable quests, VanderMeer's anthology plays delicious postmodernist games that are sure to delight the discerning (and slightly warped) reader.

Luke Boehnke

An art project by Luke Boehnke, a student of Eric Hongisto, a sometime bullet chess opponent of mine on the Internet Chess Club.

Your business card reflects who you are

Earlier this year, I met the magician and inventor Mark Setteducati, who was one of the organizers of G4G6.

Trying to find a landscaper's phone number, I dropped a bunch of business cards on my desk, and Mark's flipped open.

Another view:

Some of things Mark invents (and patents) are magic tricks. But wouldn't it ruin things to have to reveal magical secrets in patents? Mark seems to have found a solution in the obscure language permitted to patent writers. Here's the abstract to his Spectator failure trick involving suspension illusion, US Patent 5,409,420:

A magician's prop comprised of a flat body having an elongate body portion extending along a central axis rearward from a head and elongate lateral portions extending laterally and forward from locations on respective opposite sides of the body portion behind the head to free end portions protruding a small distance in front of the head. A ballast weight and a magnetic element of less weight are concealed in respective free end portions, with respective centers of gravity thereof spaced in front of the head. The resultant weight distribution of the body is such that, when extending horizontally, the surreptitious addition and removal of a hidden magnetic balance weight to the magnetic element by a magician's sleight of hand sets the object into and out of balance extending horizontally from a single pylon positioned under the head, the improbable horizontal balance providing an illusion that a portion of the body remote from the head is suspended. A second magnetic element can be provided to obtain an alternative point of adherence for the balance weight and a point of balance alternative to the head. The ballast weight can be omitted and a third magnetic element and a second balance weight.

Yeah, that pretty much spoils it.

Omen

In the mail, the "2004 Presidential Campaign Photograph," from John Kerry and John Edwards.

It says "Registered Photo Number 160027079" on it. It was "Prepared Exclusively" for me.

Then, at the bottom of the photo, some alarming chicken-counting:

That just has to be bad luck. I might as well have a received a photo of a smiling Shrub with a newspaper over his head:

KERRY DEFEATS BUSH

I just mailed the DNC another $200.

Spinal columns

I just noticed that two of the books stacked on my desk have flawed spines.

Howie's book says "Semigroup Thoery".

Clifford and Preston's title is upside down.

The midstream font change in Baader and Nipkow is intentional I think, but it's still dumb. It's a good book, but it should have been titled "Term Rewriting." Robert Graves is probably the last person to whom "All That" should be permitted.