Category: …and everything else

Michael: You know, the ability to walk through walls could be handy
Kelly: except how do you not walk thru the floor, too?
Kelly: that’s always bothered me
Kelly: a floor is just a wall for your feet
Michael: Well you see, you’d have to have enough pressure to push through
Kelly: and stepping down wouldn’t be enough pressure?
Kelly: besides, if you push *against*, you would also be pushing *down*
Michael: I figure, basically, if you’re exerting enough pressure that you would break something, then instead you pass through
Kelly: if you push against, you push down – to prevent yourself from just going back
Kelly: you’d sink just as much as you’d go thru
Michael: You’re ignoring my theory.
Kelly: because your theory is stupid
Michael: My theory is only stupid to the ignorant!
Kelly: …or people who understand how force works

*whistles innocently*
(Seriously, if anyone does want to weigh in, feel free. But this is a really good example of why arguing with me when I’m peckish isn’t a good idea. And yes, Michael, I realize you’ll just say I’m always peckish. :p )

Today’s NYTimes Book Review is worth the read – they explain what books presidential hopefuls (and people hoped will run, regardless of what they’ve said) should read. Includes such advice as:

RUDOLPH GIULIANI
Former mayor of New York

Should tell reporters he’s read “Childhood’s End,” by Arthur C. Clarke: An advanced intelligence arrives from above, creating a utopia by integrating all of humanity into a single mind that thinks and acts as one.

Might also consider reading “The War of the Worlds,” by H. G. Wells: During a cataclysmically destructive event, an observant bystander happens to be in the right place at the right time and thereafter never stops talking about it.

and

AL GORE
Former vice president of the United States

Should tell reporters he’s read “The Andromeda Strain,” by Michael Crichton: Working in quiet isolation, a team of scientists manages to avert catastrophe through the systematic application of reason.

Might also consider reading “Foundation,” by Isaac Asimov: A supergenius with a knack for predicting the future determines that things on Earth are about to get very bad very soon. In return for his service, he is arrested.

Delightfully snarky!

Would someone buy this for me in a Mac version? Kthx. (More pictures, including the gorgeous top as well as a tutorial, at the link.)

[edited to add: yeah the link is down – probably ended up on a metafilter or slashdot, with the expected consequences.]

I can believe things that are true and I can believe things that aren’t true and I can believe things where nobody knows if they’re true or not. I can believe in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny and Marilyn Monroe and the Beatles and Elvis and Mister Ed. Listen ”” I believe that people are perfectible, that knowledge is infinite, that the world is run by secret banking cartels and is visted by aliens on a regular basis, nice ones that look like wrinkledy lemurs and bad ones who mutilate cattle and want our water and women. I believe that the future sucks and I believe that the future rocks and I believe that one day White Buffalo Woman is going to come back and kick everyone’s ass. I believe that all men are just overgrown boys with deep problems communicating and that the decline in good sex in America is coincident with the decline in drive-in movie theaters from state to state. I believe that all politicians are unprincipled crooks and I still believe that they are better than the alternative. I believe that California is going to sink into the sea when the big one comes, while Florida is going to dissolve into madness and alligators and toxic waste. I believe that antibacterial soap is destroying our resistance to dirt and disease so that one day we’ll all be wiped out by the common cold like the Martians in War of the Worlds. I believe that the greatest poets of the last century were Edith Sitwell and Don Marquis, that jade is dried dragon sperm, and that thousands of years ago in a former life I was a one-armed Siberian shaman. I believe that mankind’s destiny lies in the stars. I believe that candy really did taste better when I was a kid, that it’s aerodynamically impossible for a bumblebee to fly, that light is a wave and a particle, that there’s a cat in a box somewhere who’s alive and dead at the same time (although if they don’t ever open the box to feed it it’ll eventually just be two different kinds of dead), and that there are stars in the universe billions of years older than the universe itself. I believe in a personal god who cares about me and worries and oversees everything I do. I believe in an impersonal god who set the universe in motion and went off to hang with her girlfriends and doesn’t even know that I’m alive. I believe in an empty and godless universe of causal chaos, background noise, and sheer blind luck. I believe that anyone who says that sex is overrated just hasn’t done it properly. I believe in absolute honesty and sensible social lies. I believe in a woman’s right to choose, a baby’s right to live, that while all human life is sacred there’s nothing wrong with the death penalty if you can trust the legal system implicitly, and that no one but a moron would ever trust the legal system. I believe that life is a game, that life is a cruel joke, and that life is what happens when you’re alive and that you might as well lie back and enjoy it.
-Neil Gaiman, American Gods