"Suspicious Activity?"
Originally uploaded by drewbic. sorry, crossposting from flickr is tricky...
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After blatantly ignoring my own advice and ordering one of the first Macbook Pros off the assembly line, all was peachy as my homeostasis (my powerbook) seemed to hum along with the occasional speed boost thanks to actualy Universal Binaried Ying-Yanged software. Soon random I/O errors became major ones, and a 2 week bad-block scan confirmed my greatest fears - I got a lemon. While I've been able to swing my weight around in the past for some better access to the Apple Death Star, they didn't seem to be having it this time around.
Around April this thing spent a week sitting in the Apple Store Soho, victim of an errant character in the serial number, which is odd because they use barcode scanners for those by now. Once finally shipped to Texas, my prognosis was confirmed, a bad HD. So not only had I lost all the work I had used it for since first getting it around April 15th, but I was without the book for almost a complete month. In other words, I've been in a personal hell because my powerbook is like an arm or a leg and without it I am severly disabled.
To make matters worse, I was excited to upgrade to Movable Type 3.2 until I realized I already was running it. The last major update to this blogging software was almost a full year ago! Only now are they pubicly beta-testing version 3.3. In this downtime, something seems to have zapped a great many comments, among other things, so this environment too, will need some significant maintenance.
So, to this of you who actually read this thing, I'm sorry sorry sorry, but I have a few long plane rides ahead of me to finally get everything humming along again...
Until then, it's baseball season!~!!! Let's play ball!
Blog along with me and some Mets diehards!!
Why is it that the number of Mets blogs completely dwarfs any other team, especially the evil empire up in the Bronx?
]]>May 26, 2006— Building a cloak of invisibility, Harry Potter-style, just got a little easier.
Two methods now precisely describe how a new class of engineered materials could be used to guide waves of electromagnetic radiation — including light — around objects, bestowing invisibility.
In the near future, the technique could shield stealth aircraft from radar detectors and protect equipment from unwanted radiation. But in the long term, the optical illusion could offer new ways to hide things in broad daylight.
"To turn this into something practical is not easy. But there is hope that this could be done because of new developments in optic materials," said Ulf Leonhardt of the University of St. Andrews in the U.K.
Leonhardt and John Pendry of the Imperial College London independently reported their work in this week's issue of Science.
Specially-designed "metamaterials" built on semiconductor chips, they report, can be tuned to divert approaching electromagnetic radiation in another direction.
Other researchers have been investigating how to use these materials to produce invisibility devices.
But Leonhardt and Pendry are the first to precisely calculate how a sphere or cylinder made from metamaterial could be designed to redirect the flow of oncoming waves of radiation around it. An object inside such a sphere would be rendered invisible.
To manipulate the waves, the researchers capitalize on light's proclivity to move along the path of least resistance.
That phenomenon produces familiar optical illusions, such as the way light bends when passing between air and water. A fish beneath the surface appears to be in one place, but try to grab him and you quickly realize his location was a trick of light.
Scientists describe how light behaves in a given material with a number known as the refractive index.
Leonhardt and Pendry have shown that if a material's refractive index could be changed from point to point, light rays might avoid it entirely.
How a cloaking device might actually look remains unclear. But it would employ the metamaterials built onto semiconductor chips and move radiation or light waves at specific speeds along a path of least resistance—that path being the edge of the sphere. The waves would flow around the sphere like a fluid and return to their original path undisturbed.
To the observer, the item in the center of the sphere would go unseen.
But there are still big hurdles to overcome before an invisibility cloak can be made real. So far, the calculations only account for one wavelength of light at the same time. And while that might work for radar applications, it wouldn't work for the entire spectrum of wavelengths in visible light at once, said Mark Dennis, a research fellow at the University of Southampton in the U.K.
"The real ingenuity to making a cloaking device is yet to come," Dennis said.
Directing: Ang
Picture: Good Night
Actor: Hoffman
Actress: Witherspoon
Supporting Actor: Clooney
Sup Actress: Rachel Weisz
Animated: Howl's
Art Direction: King Kong
Cinematography: Brokeback
Costume: Geisha
Docu: March of the Penguins
Editing: Munich
Music: Brokeback
Sound Editing: King Kong
Sound Mixing: King Kong
Visual Effects: King Kong
Original Song: Hustle & Flow
Adapted Screenplay: Capote
Original Screenplay: Syriana
Dick Cheney shot somebody in the face Saturday (they covered it up until now, because that's all these people know how to do at this point)
wait
Dick shot a TEXAS REPUBLICAN (who are pretty much despicable enough on their own) in the face.
wait
HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Poetic Justice anyone? Why couldn't it have been Scalia?
On CSI: Miami, David Caruso plays Lt. Horatio “cool-as-a-cucumber” Caine, or “H” for short. Early NYPD Blue fans will remember Caruso as Andy Sipowicz’s first partner – and the guy who left the show in order to have a “movie career.”
But that didn’t quite happen. So now he’s back on TV leading the procedural crime drama ensemble (filmed in Manhattan Beach) -- which is great for those of us who want to entertain themselves on a really crappy television night (sorry Wife Swap fans). LAist, therefore, would like to introduce our version of “The David Caruso Drinking Game.”
We know that there are several versions of the CSI: Miami drinking game already out there, but we wanted to focus on the greatness that is David Caruso. You see, he plays H so seriously, so one-dimensionally, that we can’t help but guffaw at his dramatic acting tics. Without further ado, here are LAist's rules…
Get your favorite beer ready. (We thought about playing this with hard liquor, but that would be begging for alcohol poisoning before the first commercial break, so beer is the drink of choice for the Caruso.)
2. Take one swig every time H places his arms akimbo (on his hips).
3. Take two swigs when Horatio takes his sunglasses off for dramatic effect.
4. Likewise, take two swigs when Horatio puts his sunglasses on for dramatic effect.
5. Take three gulps when H wears a dark blazer in the middle of an investigation. (Hello, pastels…this is hot and humid Miami…Crockett and Tubbs land, remember).
6. Drink for four counts when he addresses Jonathan Togo's character as “Mr. Wolfe.”
7. Drink for five counts when he’s talking and his head is tilted at a 45-degree angle. (Don’t forget to add another count if he has his arms akimbo at the same time.)
8. Drink for six counts when the camera films him entering the scene from a low angle for dramatic effect. Some games refer to this as the "Horatio-as-Christ" shot. (Is this because he’s short? IMDB lists him as 5’11.”)
9. Drink for seven if you ever see him smile. (This is extremely rare, but it does happen on occasion.)
10. Guzzle the entire can/bottle when an incredibly hot babe hits on Horatio. Cause, really, she must have the beer goggles on. Or we should put them on in order to buy it.
If you aren’t a fan of CSI: Miami, trust us, you will be after one round of Caruso playing. Oh yeah, and it really helps if you don’t have to be anywhere early on Tuesday morning. Bottoms up!
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It's kinda like a drug dealer telling you to quit drugs, and he knows how.
Hey kids, do you know what 9-11 is? It's the number of IQ points your average American has lost back in 2001!
]]>Anyway I've got 2 early picks I'd like everyone to vote for:
Kellie Pickler - works at the drive-in restaurant we pass every year on the way to the beach in North Carolina, she comes from a really F'ed up family. She's adorable and hot hot hot. And she can sing really well; well, I mean, well enough to stand up with all the pop crap that comes out of that show.
AND
May the schwarz be with you the Jewish chick who took a train from NY to NC after having surgery and sang pretty well
Anyway I've got a special place set aside for these 2
]]>THE specialty grocer Trader Joe's will open a store near Union Square in about three months, a spokeswoman said yesterday, confirming a year's worth of reports that the national chain would join a growing list of food stores along 14th Street.
Trader Joe's, based in Monrovia, Calif., is best known for low-priced groceries and prepared and frozen foods. About 80 percent of what it sells carries the Trader Joe's label. A little more than a third of its merchandise is fresh, but also packaged.
It is also known for selling cheap Charles Shaw wine, known as Two-Buck Chuck because it sold for $2 a bottle when it was first offered.
The company, which has 250 stores in 19 states, will open at 142 East 14th Street, with a separate wine shop next door at 138 East 14th Street. It has 19 stores in the New York area, but none in New York City.
The spokeswoman, Alison Mochizuki, said there were no plans for other stores in the city.
At 15,000 square feet, including the wine shop, the new Trader Joe's will be less than a third the size of the Whole Foods that opened last year at 4 Union Square South. Balducci's recently opened a 10,000-square-foot store at Eighth Avenue and 14th Street, Garden of Eden has a store at 14th Street and Fifth Avenue, and four days a week, the city's flagship Greenmarket is in Union Square.
If you can read this letter to yourself in his voice in your head, it's pretty damn funny....
]]> SO, I went and got your book, "Gitting-R-Donned", and excitedly skimmed past the joke about that one time you farted and something farty happened, on past the thing about the fat girl who farted and finally found it, . Well, needless to say I farted. I farted up a fartstorm right there in the Flyin' J Travel Center. I fartingly bought the book and took it home with an excitement I haven't experienced since I got Bertha Chudfarter's Grandma drunk and she took her teeth out and blew me as I was finger banging her while wearing a Jesus sock puppet in the back of the boiler room at The Church of the Redeemer off I-20 (I don't care who you are, that's funny.)]]>Now we all know NJ has a bad rap. NYers like to thumb their nose at Jersey. For edification purposes, we're thumbing away if you're FROM Jersey, not IN Jersey. Lot's of people moved there, hell I'd live there. But to be FROM Jersey is a whole 'nother story. Stay there long enough, and you too will be from Jersey. Be careful!
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