Had to stop in my tracks for fear of walking on the mines I laid
So I get to work this morning and there are cops swarming all over.
The story is that someone somehow found an "antique munition". I don't know exactly what this means. An old artillery shell? A landmine? Anyway they figure they should turn it into the police. So they drive it to work and call the police from there.
"Where is this antique munition now, sir?"
"In my car at the parking garage at work."
So the bomb squad had to come out and seal off the parking garage and all.
Just a little explosive excitement for the day.
Sweet dreams are made of these
I went to a thesis defense today but it was warm in the lecture hall and I slept through the second half of the talk.
Karmic payback was swift, since when we went to see
The Illusionist in the evening, there was an old guy in the audience loudly snoring a few rows behind us.
I can't recommend
The Illusionist, mainly because the "plot twist" is so obvious it can be seen from space. I'm pretty sure the average eight-year-old could see everything in this movie coming.
Also, the movie opens with the magician being arrested, then flashes back to earlier events preceding the arrest. But when the story finally comes back to the arrest, it is not consistent with the opening scenes (if my memory is correct). I think you have to conclude that either (a) the beginning and ending of the movie are not consistent; or (b) the story jumps around in time even more than is apparent, and some scenes are shown in a deliberately misleading order. Or maybe both.
Finally, the movie seems lazy in just using computer graphics for the magic effects. I would have liked it better if the magic tricks seemed like they might actually be done by a magician in fin de siecle Vienna.
I'll take your bet you're gonna regret 'cause I'm the best that's ever been
I finally collected on my dinner bet with Joel from the 2005 race. I suggested we go to Schazi's. Unfortunately, the Governor seems to have jacked up the menu prices, so it was a bit more expensive than I had intended.
To compensate for his ordinary shoes
We were cleaning out the closet this weekend and I pulled out an old pair of Ecco shoes. Hey, why did I stop wearing this pair? Oh yeah, because the interior of the heel was worn away. So I threw the shoes away.
Then today I noticed that my current pair of Eccos is starting to develop the same problem. Damn!
And I think the reason I was more sensitive to the inside heel of the shoe today, was that my vintage 1989 Wallace and Gromit socks have a hole in them. Double damn!
It's a dark day for my footwear. I guess seventeen years is a good life for a sock though.
The dogs of war don't negotiate
It turns out that Golem 2 is classified as Significant Military Equipment under the International Traffic in Arms Regulations.
Among other things, it cannot be exported to Burma, Belarus, the People's Republic of China, Cote d'Ivoire, Cuba, Cyprus, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Liberia, Libya, North Korea, Rwanda, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Vietnam, Yemen, or Zimbabwe. It could possibly be exported to Afghanistan, but only for use by the rightful Government of Afghanistan.
So kiss me goodbye, honey, I'm gonna make it out alive
On Saturday night, we went to see
Snakes on a Plane at Grauman's Chinese.
I don't have much to say about
Snakes on a Plane. It was passable. It was better than
Shaft. I'm glad we saw it when we did, instead of after opening weekend, or on television, which would be pointless. I don't think this particular cult phenomenon will have great staying power.
However, Grauman's Chinese does have great staying power. I remember years ago I made a resolution to see movies exclusively at Grauman's Chinese (or at other theaters of comparable size and personality), and now I can't remember why I didn't stick with that resolution. Parking was expensive, but if you're going to pay the outrageous price of a movie ticket in the first place, a big theater like GC certainly yields a better experience than the crummy little theaters, with screens like a large TV, that are so prevalent around here.
The footprints and handprints outside GC are also a testament to the toughness of concrete. I'm sort of surprised they have not been more worn by eighty years of tourists stepping in them.
SIAM's gonna be the witness to the ultimate test of cerebral fitness
Ken asks if someone can handicap the various
Clay Millenium Problems and offer Vegas odds on which ones will be solved first.
I don't know enough to offer an answer.
However I'm inspired to quote this comment that Sam Buss of UCSD made on Wednesday:
"Everyone knows about the Clay Institute prize for proving whether or not P=NP. It is a measure of the importance of the problem that a million dollars has done absolutely nothing to increase interest in it."
The signs were there you should have bought connections before
I'm spending the week at
Connections II and it's been reasonably worthwhile, by which I mean, the food is good.
At dinner I sat next to
Neil Gershenfeld. His book
Fab has been sitting unread on my shelf for a while, but I didn't recognize him right away. I accidentally kicked the power cord out of his laptop. (It was that kind of dinner.)
I'm a loser baby so why don't you kill me
It's curious that, as of this writing, the public list of
DARPA Urban Challenge teams only has
14 15 entries. And it's a list of losers, sort of: I think only 4 of the
14 15 (Golem Group, Axion Racing, Mojavaton, and University of Florida) even made it to the finals of the DARPA Grand Challenge last year, and of those only the University of Florida is a large institution.
It's not that successful and/or eminent institutions such as CMU, Caltech, Cornell, MIT, the Ford Motor Company, et cetera, have not sent in entries. I know that they have. I guess they just can't be bothered to send in a photo and be listed on the public team roster.
Like Kurosawa I make mad films
We watched
Shichinin no samurai and it was yoshi.
We watched
Donnie Darko and it was yoshi too, but it's not quite clear to me what Donnie did at the end. I guess he chose to go back in time through a portal? How did he do that? Or did he have no choice in the matter, in which case, what was really the point of the movie? At least I'm glad to resolve my lingering confusion between
Donnie Darko and a remembered page or two of
Butterflies Are Free which talked about Danny Dark.
If like me you wish there was a healthy snack chip that didn't taste terrible, may I recommend the Genisoy Soy Crisp. The Tangy Salt and Vinegar ones are the best on a stand-alone basis, but the Zesty Barbecue and Rich Cheddar Cheese ones are also decent if eaten with salsa. I don't particularly recommend the Deep Sea Salted.
I have not listened to any songs by Fall Out Boy except for "Dance, Dance," but they have some good song titles, e.g., "It's Not A Side Effect of the Cocaine, I'm Thinking It Must Be Love."
I finally got around to reading Glen David Gold's novel
Carter Beats the Devil which my sister sent me a year or two ago. I thought it was very yoshi indeed.
Might win an Oscar you can never tell
If there's anyone out there who hasn't seen movies of the Golem yet, you can catch the
highlight reel here.
