Buddha Buck

Quote of the night

Sun, 06 Dec 2009 01:11:14 GMT

skitten: What does "pedantic" mean?
blaisepascal: Um... (thinking)
skitten: Boring?
blaisepascal: If "Boring" is all you get out of the types of answers Zadhe and I give...
skitten: Overly-detailed! yes, overly-detailed!

Review: Alias

Sun, 29 Nov 2009 03:21:52 GMT

I've watched the first 7 episodes of Alias. I believe I'm going to take it off my Netflix queue.

The basic premise of the show is that Syndey Barstow was recruited by an international intelligence/espionage organization under the pretext that they were a covert branch of the CIA called "SD-6". Before the beginning of the series, she had been working for 6 years as an operative with the cover of being an account rep for an international bank (thus explaining the frequent foreign trips, her language training, etc). Her actual missions were short-term, a la James Bond and that ilk of agent. Soon after becoming engaged, she broke cover and told her fiancé she was a spy for the CIA. When SD-6 discovered this, they killed him. In fairness to SD-6, they did tell Syndey that would happen if her involvement with SD-6 leaked. She's enraged, discovers that SD-6 isn't really part of the CIA, and goes to the CIA to become a double agent to bring down SD-6. So far, the CIA has basically told her "Keep doing ops for SD-6, let us piggy-back onto it so we know what SD-6 is learning, and feed us info on SD-6". Oh yeah, her father also works for SD-6, was the one who let her know SD-6 wasn't CIA, and is also a CIA double agent, and she doesn't like or trust her father.

I'll forgive the existence of three rival large, well-funded, private, international non-governmental spy organizations, none of which has a clear explanation as to how they were formed, are funded, etc. Shadowy organizations like this are common fodder in this genre, although usually it is established that the shadowy organization really is working for the government, even if it is uber-covert. Nikita (at least in the movie) worked for the government, as did Bourne, for instance. But the Alliance of Twelve (which SD-6 is part of), FTL, and the K Directorate have no governmental affiliation, they just are.

I'll forgive the high-action, short-term ops they send Sydney on, despite her poor disguises, sloppy spycraft, and repeated run-ins with agents from the FTL and K Directorate whom she recognizes from previous ops. I'm not sure I've seen a single op where Sydney and handlers have been able to get in and out clean without setting off alarms, fighting guards, or getting captured and having to escape. And Sydney is supposed to be one of SD-6's top operatives! But without the ops, a lot of the action on the show would be gone. So it, too, is typical of the genre.

But what I find hard to forgive is Sydney's attitude towards death. So far, in the seven episodes I've seen, she has lost her fiancé, an SD-6 agent in Morocco she's working with, 4 CIA agents, and her new SD-6 partner on an op. I do not believe we have seen her kill anyone, despite working for an organization perfectly willing to use lethal force, often having lethal force used against her, and working against rival organizations which have no qualms with killing. Each time she is faced with the death of someone around her, she freezes and is overcome with grief and anger.

She believed, for 6 years, she was a field operative for a covert black-ops section of the CIA. She believed her operations were vital for national security. She is treated as one of the top operatives for her particular branch. She is told that if she broke cover, people would die. She routinely goes on dangerous ops where people try to kill her if she is caught. In the 7 episodes I've watched, she has been captured and tortured at least twice by people who have made no bones about killing her after they've extracted what they want from her. Are we expected to accept that she is not mentally capable of killing in self-defense and breaks down during an op if friendlies are killed? Are we expected to accept that after freezing in an op when someone is killed, SD-6 would immediately send her out on other ops instead of grounding her as unreliable? Is it reasonable for a super-spy to shoot the strap of the bag containing the McGuffin rather than the enemy super-spy escaping with the bag?

For me, that stretches my suspension of disbelief too far. It's central to her motivation and character, yet it breaks genre convention without any explanation. I can accept that she's not an assassin, and isn't sent on missions where the object is to kill the target. But I can't accept that she can't deal with or in death at all.

Wikipedia's synopsis of Syndey indicate that this changes in season 2, and she becomes a more "stereotypical" spy. It also indicates that by the end of season 2 everything in the synopsis above is history and not really relevant anymore. In a way, that sounds like the writers used season 2 to "reboot" the series and ditched most of the original premise. Perhaps the "new" Alias is better, but I'm don't see a need to watch that far to find out.

Bohemian Rhapsody Day!

Wed, 25 Nov 2009 21:49:10 GMT

My friend anarchist_nomad reminded me that today is Bohemian Rhapsody Day, and that the proper way to celebrate is to listen to the song 12 times.

By coincidence, Neatorama today posted a link to a List of 15 Unique Bohemian Rhapsody covers.

When I get home, I'm planning on watching all 15. I've already watched the Muppet's cover (released yesterday) twice already.

It's a small world.

Wed, 25 Nov 2009 04:07:13 GMT

Every morning I get up at 6am, check Google Reader, daily web comics, LJ Friends, and email. Then I try to nap until 7:45am. I eat breakfast with skitten, dress, recheck Google Reader and gmail, and try to get out of the house by 9am. I rarely make it. I walk to work, about a mile, and get there by 9:20 or so. I work until noonish, then go out for lunch alone for about an hour. I work until 6pmish, and walk home. I have about 8 coworkers, and I compartmentalize work and non-work. Every other Friday skitten picks me up for lunch to break in my new paycheck.

In the evenings skitten and I sometimes watch movies or TV from netflix, sometimes she goes to a music jam, sometimes I read, always we peruse our online interests. skitten has made lots of friends online via various special interest groups and usually has about a dozen or more chat windows going. I read Google Reader, gmail, LJ, and a couple of other sites.

Once a week or so sheherazahde comes over for dinner, and occasionally the two of us will go out for dinner elsewhen.

Two friends I see face to face is a small world.

Recently I've felt like the posts I make to LJ, the comments I make to blogs, forums, etc, and emails I make to mailing lists have been unread, certainly not replied to or acknowledged.

It makes a small world even smaller.

I like personal interaction with friends; I like seeing people, talking face to face. Despite the staggeringly vast amount of stuff I read online, I don't feel like what I write can substitute for a good conversation. I crave personal interaction, I find this small world stifling, crippling, confining.

At the same time, I am introverted and find it hard to meet new friends, especially without some structure to contextualize it. When I went to college at RIT, there were times when I would barely leave my room, except to go to meals and to the gaming club meetings and games. I had bottles of urine in my wardrobe. Given the number of classes I missed, it's amazing I took away a B+ GPA. My first semester at UB, a few years later, was better -- at least I went to class and the bathroom -- but I wasn't involved in anything social. I showed up at the gaming club's first meeting, put my name down on the list, and left. leiacat, who did data entry for the club, was concerned my name was a prank.

My world grew starting in my second semester at UB. I got involved in the gaming club, met friends who regularly played cards, met leiacat (and thus convinced her I was real), got involved with the ham radio club, got involved with the Independents (disabled student association), got involved with Alpha Phi Omega, and basically had a situation where there were lots of people on campus I could call friend, several places I could go and be surrounded by people I knew, who were usually good for conversation or games (when they weren't discussing the most recent Vampire LARP), interesting projects to do (I got to take pictures of a friend as she tried to use a women's bathroom stall), and lots of intriguing personal dramas among friends and occasionally myself to be engaged by.

(This isn't to say that outside of college nothing was going on. I had friends in high school. Between RIT and UB I had a small, loyal number of friends I knew in Binghamton. kinnerc was a strong anchor that helped me get to UB after years of paying off debt, and continued to buoy me as we moved to Ithaca while I was going to UB. My involvement with USS Accord started ).

After UB, kinnerc and I were in Ithaca. sheherazahde moved to Ithaca into kenshardik's apartment, and so I was surrounded by both old friends and new. I was involved in the SCA, with the USS Accord, the Ithaca pagan community. But with various waxing and waning, over time things shrank. I stopped going to USS Accord meetings about the time kinnerc and I broke up; the Ithaca pagan community defunked; We started having dinner and rituals with Zahde and a number of IC students at our house during one summer while the SCA was on break, and in the fall that conflicted with SCA meetings, so I fell out of the SCA. Eventually the students graduated and left, and I stopped being interested in ritual. The dinners remain, with just myself, skitten, and Zahde. People left.

By late 2006 I was mainly involved with the Morris Dancers, the UU church, the folk song and country dance communities, and a small cadre of close friends (skitten, sheherazahde, kenshardik, kinnerc, perhaps a couple of others). I had time then -- I was unemployed. Then I got a job, and skitten had a stroke (both within 2 months). Dancing disappeared, I wasn't that interested in the church, and my world got smaller.

It has shrunk slowly since then. kinnerc moved out of town, then moved out of state. kenshardik got unsatisfied where his life was taking him, and made some radical changes for the better, but I rarely see him anymore. I've fallen out of the habit of going to jams (where I mostly read, anyway). It has shrunk to the point where it is now: Get up, read vast quantities of online information, work, do household stuff with skitten, periodically hang out with Zahde, sleep.

It's hard for me to feel like the outsider. I've tried to go back to the SCA, but there's been a large change over of people, and I feel like the newcomer. When I went to a recent major USS Accord event, I knew a small few, mostly out of town folks from a decade+ ago, and I hung out with them as much as possible. I've tried going to a local Free Software User Group's meetings, but again felt like the outsider, as people broke into small groups I wasn't in. skitten will occasionally take me to meetings of people she's found via her newly minted special interests, but I find I have little in common and nothing clicks. This is a small city and there don't seem to be that many clubs or groups I can join I'd fit in. Sharing a car limits my mobility as well. I've often felt that living in a big city would help, as both the press of people would be comforting and there would be more opportunities for socialization.

I love going to rbdarkly's gatherings because I'm with a crowd of friends. I love going to the Super Sekret gathering in October for the same reason. Going to Dance Flurry last year meant hanging out with Marnen&Millie&Zimmara and their friends. When we went to NEFFA, I got to hang out with Morris Dancers friends from Ithaca, Rochester, Boston, and all over, and we visted kinnerc and Will. I like going to Binghamton to hang out with Wolf, Queenie and their kids. These things are great; they satisfy a need I don't feel is met in my daily life.

I recently posted that we were going to MD/VA for a week and change to visit family (in Richmond) and friends (in the DC/Baltimore area). I asked who on LJ, living in that area, wanted to meet up with me There are at least a dozen mutual LJ friends I know are from there. I got zero replies. That stung. My world shrank, sharply. Skitten has lined up a whole list of people to see, most of whom I don't know. I currently have 4 -- our host, my mother, leiacat and bfudlmint. And I'm not even sure how into it the last two are. I'm working on two more.

My world is too fucking small. And I don't know what to do about it.

Review: Oishinbo: Japanese Cuisine: A la Carte

Tue, 24 Nov 2009 02:51:20 GMT

According to Wikipedia, Oishinbo (美味しんぼ) is a long-running manga, dating back to 1983, In Japan, it has been republished in over 100 collected volumes, selling over 100 million total copies. It has also been made into an anime series totalling 136 episodes. The series title roughly translates to "The Gourmet", and is about a newspaper reporter tasked with a series about the "Ultimate Menu", a model meal representing the pinnacle of Japanese food.

US Rights were bought by Viz, who released the first translated volume, Oishinbo: Japanese Cuisine: A la Carte, in January 2009. I found it in the library yesterday and checked it out.

Viz decided, when doing the translation, to not present the series in chronological order, but rather group the stories thematically. This first volume consists of 10 stories highlighting the essence of Japanese Cuisine, with "courses" (chapters) titled "The Secret of Dashi", "The Right To Be A Chef", "The Ultimate Etiquette", etc. I am of mixed opinion about this. On the one hand, I would like to read the story as published, but on the other hand, I didn't notice the disjointedness too much. Each course stood well by itself. It's possible that Viz made the editorial decision to choose stand-alone stories when picking their "A la Carte", and that the full series is less episodic.

This is a book which would, in my opinion, appeal to the Japanophile and the Foodie alike. Centered around Japanese Cuisine, the stories delve deeply into the heart of what makes really good food good -- the craft, the ingredients, the culture, etc, surrounding it.

In one story, a foreign food critic challenges the notion that Japanese "Cooking" is meaningful, since cooking is all about applying techniques to food, while Japanese "cooking" is about emphasizing the naturalness of the ingredients -- in other words, doing nothing to them. Citing sashimi -- the centerpiece of many Japanese haute cuisine -- as just sliced raw fish, and thus not "cooking", he challenges the heros to show him otherwise. The rest of the story features a chef preparing sashimi using three very different techniques (four if you count the "control" sashimi he makes for comparison purposes), explaining each technique in terms of how and why, until the critic admits that sashimi is proper "cooking"[*].

While all the stories highlight the epitome of good Japanese cooking and eating, not all of them involve haute cuisine. One story features a contest centered on the traditional Japanese meal of rice and miso soup; another examines the manufacture of traditional chopsticks, while yet another is filled with dishes the main character exclaims only the lowest class of restaurant would serve (and then explains to the chef's satisfaction that he understands what the chef was aiming for better than any of the other experts at the meal).

Many of the stories have B-plots, and there are many recurring characters. This is a problem with this particular format of the story, since the a-la-carte format loses their ongoing stories. In the Ninth Course, one of the characters has a boyfriend, while in the Tenth Course, she's married and pregnant. Clearly the stories are out of order and cover years of time. Two of the main characters, YAMAOKA Shiro and KURITA Yuko, are friendly coworkers in parts of the book, married in other parts, and finish off the book being chastised for arguing-flirting with each other. We don't get to see their relationship grow (although what we do see implies that it does), nor do we see what happens to a lot of the other characters who are introduced. This is, in my opinion, the biggest flaw with the book.

A central conflict in the series is between the main character, YAMAOKA Shiro (a newspaper food reporter and critic), and his father KAIBARA Yuzan, a prominent artist and gourmand. Yamaoka blames his father's impossibly-high food standards for driving his mother to her death, while Kaibara refuses to forgive Yamaoka for leaving the household (especially the way he left). Because they are both heavily involved in the high-end food scene, and both travel in similar social circles, they have opportunity to conflict a lot. When a restaurateur is distraught because another customer has sent back his dashi three times causing the (replacement) cook to storm out, Kaibara volunteers to step into the kitchen, sees the problem, and makes a satisfactory dashi. When the picky customer, Kaibara finds out the satisfactory dashi was made by Yamaoka, however, it isn't good enough and he storms out. In the story about chopsticks, Kaibara and Yamaoka run into each other and Kaibara chastises Yamaoka on a vitally important piece of etiquette that no one else at the meal knew about. Kaibara appears in half the stories in the book.

The book also includes a 3-page essay by the author titled "What is Japanese Cuisine", 14 pages of translators notes, and recipes for two dishes in the book. I had an incredibly unusual experience reading the essay. The book is presented in Japanese-fashion, in that the right side is read first, then the left, and one turns the pages "backwards" to read it. The prose essay was no exception, with the first page of English in a two-page spread on the right, and so forth. What I found unusual is that despite both Japanese and English being read from the top of the page down, I wanted to read the essay from the bottom of the page up. I don't know how, or why, my brain made that decision, but each page I turned to required me to consciously acquire the top of the page.

Overall, I would say it is book well worth reading, and at $13/book list price (less via Amazon.com), I am seriously considering buying my own copies. Each book is 5"x7" R-to-L paperback format, with 275pp and heavy cardstock covers, so the price is a bargain. Amazon.com lists 7 volumes to date: Japanese Cuisine (1/09), Sake (3/09), Ramen and Gyoza (5/09), Fish, Sushi, and Sashimi (8/09), Vegetables (9/09), The Joy of Rice (11/09) and Izakaya - Pub Food (1/10).

[*] Others may disagree. At least one food scientist states that cooking specifically involves the use of heat to transform food. By this definition, fermented pickles and sauerkrauts, traditional unheated cheeses, etc are not cooked, but that isn't a condemnation of them. The definition of "cooking" used in this story broader than that, and basically covers any transformative technique to prepare food.

What does the "Jesus Only Apostolic Church of God" believe?

Sun, 22 Nov 2009 04:09:09 GMT

There's a storefront church in Ithaca prominently labeled the "Jesus Only Apostolic Church of God". I have wondered for a while exactly what theology they were advertising with that name.

I think I've figured it out, and think they are some form of Oneness Pentacostal.

Anyone have any other ideas?

While talking to a friend today about what we thought that church name signified, we got talking about Apostolic Succession. After a bit of initial confusion (where the ideas of the Petrine Doctrine were muddled in the mix) I mentioned that the RCC recognizes the apostolic succession of clergy in schizms from RC -- specifically that Rome recognizes Anglican ordinations and thus makes it relatively easy for Anglican bishops and priests who convert to Catholicism to take up parishes and diocese without retaking the sacrament of Holy Orders. I also mentioned that the RCC makes a distinction between having the ability to successfully administer Holy Orders (which a schizmatic bishop can do), and therefor being able to create priests and bishops who can perform transubstantiation and other things only bishops and priests can do, and having the authority to do so. A priest ordained by a schizmatic bishop can convert bread and wine into body and blood, but isn't supposed to.

There are specific terms used in Roman Catholicism to refer to these two states. I know one is "valid" -- an Anglican Ordination is considered "valid" by Rome -- but I can't remember the other term, referring to having the authority. Can anyone help me?

Holiday seasonings...

Sat, 21 Nov 2009 02:40:33 GMT

Is it just me, or did the Commercial Christmas Season start very early this year?

The Anti-Vaccination folks don't need to waste their time on me...

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 20:11:52 GMT

...my Dr's office is doing enough without them.

When I saw my Doctor in September, I asked him about a flu shot. He said it was a good idea, and suggested I make an appointment to get one. I did, for the same time I was coming in for fasting blood work, later that week.

The office called to reschedule, for mid-October.
In mid-October, the office called to reschedule, for mid-November.
Just now, the office called to reschedule, for late December (solstice, actually).

If I get the flu before getting the vaccine, do I get any compensation?

A trip to MD and VA in Dec.

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 04:04:19 GMT

skitten and I are planning a trip to MD (the Baltimore area) and VA (Richmond area) from 11 December to 20 December.

Our plans currently are to drive south on 11 December and crash at Mad Mike's the night of the 11-13th, head to Richmond the evening of the 14th, visit gordon92151 until the 16th, drive back up to Mike's and stay there until the 20th, when we would drive home to Ithaca.

There are a lot of people we'd like to see while we're in the area, which I'm not going to try to list for fear of leaving someone out. Suffice to say that if we've discoursed with civility in the past and are around, I'd probably like to meet up with you.

Unfortunately, I don't know people's schedules, or were people are, or the best way to meet up with everyone. Logistics are a pain when working 5 hours away with limited information.

I am asking for help. Does anyone who lives in the MD/VA area have any ideas that might go into a reasonable itinerary?

A repost from 5 years ago.

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 22:38:40 GMT

The War is Over, We Live, Let Us Celebrate and Fight No More.

meh na meh na

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 04:04:50 GMT

I blame acelightning...

I can has strep?

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 15:32:05 GMT

My throat culture came back positive for strep. I was advised by my doctors office to make sure I take the full run of antibiotics and get back to them if things didn't get better.

It's not the flu

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 03:45:09 GMT

This past weekend I hadn't been feeling my best. I had a sore throat and occasional chills, and fatigue, etc. The fatigue, etc could be explained by poor sleeping habits and similar lifestyle sundry. The sore throat was more worrisome.

What I didn't have: headache, fever, nasal congestion, excessive sneezing or coughing, massive body aches, or anything egregiously debilitating. So I didn't believe it was the flue.

In fact, I wouldn't have been surprised if a good nights sleep, getting current on my hypertension and diabetes meds, taking a long, hot, shower and immediately getting into warm, clean, clothes would make me feel 100% better. (On a side note, the washing machine we bought on Friday was delivered and installed today, so there should be less issue about warm, clean, clothes in the future). It almost did -- it made me feel confident about my health to go to Binghamton this last weekend -- but not confident enough to do things like drink from the same chalice as everyone else or similar potentially germ-spreading behaviors.

But the sore throat didn't go away. If anything, it got worse. It was worst in the mornings, got better over the course of the day, and then was real bad in the mornings again. It feels crunchy, and swallowing can feel like I'm dragging something hard and sharp over it.

I didn't go to Bound For Glory last night, telling them that I didn't feel like I was contagious, but not wanting to take a chance. This morning, I phoned my boss telling him that I'd rather go to the doctor than to work. I saw my doctor nominally at 3:10 this afternoon, and spent most of the day sleeping until then.

When I got the doctors, they immediately gave me a mask to put on, but within a couple of minutes of seeing the doctor, he told me I could take it off -- it's not right for H1N1, and it doesn't even sound right for anything viral. He had no comments about my ears or nose after he looked in them, and he said my lungs sounded clear. My throat is inflamed, and he seemed concerned about the lymph nodes in the neck.

He said there's a number of possibilities (he mentioned strep, I mentioned staph, he mentioned another bacterial possibility that I hadn't heard of and can't remember), took a throat swab to test for strep, and prescribed azythromycin. I'm cleared to work tomorrow, and there seems little risk of contagion.

I've already taken the initial dose of antibiotics, and I've 4 more days to go with it. I expect I'll probably be feeling a lot better by tomorrow morning or Wednesday, but I'm not stupid enough to stop taking the antibiotics simply because I feel better.

Isn't It Ironic?

Mon, 26 Oct 2009 14:09:16 GMT

The Language Log blog recently had a discussion on the question Is Irony Universal?. To set up the discussion, he clarified exactly what he was talking about:

First, let's clarify the terminology. For the purposes of this discussion, irony means "A figure of speech in which the intended meaning is the opposite of that expressed by the words used", and not "dissimulation of ignorance as practiced by Socrates in order to confute an adversary". My guess is that Socratic irony is less likely to be a cultural universal — it seems to have caught the attention of Socrates' contemporaries as something new and unexpected — but in any case, this is a different question.

And I want to focus specifically on cases like "Wonderful!" as a response to something unwanted, or "Good job!" as a comment on culpable failure, leaving open the question of whether things in the ironic penumbra — e.g. dramatic irony, "incongruity between what might be expected and what actually occurs" — are the same thing as irony in the more narrow sense.

I hadn't necessarily seen all those definitions of irony before, and if "Wonderful!" and "Good job!" are examples of irony and not sarcasm (which he defines as "A sharp, bitter, or cutting expression or remark; a bitter gibe or taunt"), I've probably called way too many things sarcasm and not irony.

Still, it remains an amazing bit of (dramatic) irony that the song "Isn't It Ironic" has so little examples of irony (although I suspect the line "yes I really do think" would qualify as sarcasm).

One liners...

Fri, 23 Oct 2009 15:36:37 GMT

I now have a Google Wave account. Does anyone have an idea what it's good for?

My observation is that Reggae music in general and Reggae covers of Pink Floyd specifically are not conducive to a productive work environment. I just slouch back, feel my mind go fuzzy, and chill to the beat.

I dined at WildFire, the new restaurant in Ithaca replacing Lost Dog. 'Twas good, caused me to take home my main course, fuller review upon request.

Everyone says "Get a flu shot! get a flu shot!" My doctor's office has said (twice) "We need to reschedule your flu shot, can you come in 3 weeks later?". I hope I get the shot before the flu.

Open Ended Question...

Mon, 05 Oct 2009 20:58:52 GMT

What LPs (flat platters of black polyvinyl chloride plastic approximately 30cm in diameter upon which approximately 22minutes of sound is recorded in an analog format in a long spiral groove on each side, when rotated at the design speed of 1 revolution every 1.8 seconds) sound better when played at 45RPM, in your opinion?

Experimentation in our office has preliminary results that instrumental works sound faster, but not much different (for instance, Kraftwerk is reputed to sound like Daft Punk when played at 45, reggae sounds like reggae, and piano instrumentals sound completely and utterly unchanged). There is a certain amount of chipmunks-effect with vocal stuff.

Requescat in pace, Willow

Wed, 30 Sep 2009 03:27:20 GMT

When we got home tonight our cat, Willow, was sitting under my chair making a grunting sound with every breath. She continued to do so even after I picked her up and put her on a much softer surface. Calls to emergency vets suggested that she should be brought in, and after searching around for an inexpensive vet open at 9pm that could take her we finally took her to Cornell Companion Animal Hospital. As soon as the triage vet saw her and picked her up she wanted to whisk her away to be put on oxygen due to her labored breathing.

The vet told us that this was a major quality-of-life issue, and that she was suffering with the breathing, even in the oxygen. The two most likely causes for this sort of issue were congestive heart failure (there was a noticeable heart murmur and liquid sounds in the lungs) or cancer. It would be expensive to find out what it was, and there was a small probability of being able to do anything once they did find out. In the mean time, she would be suffering with the breathing all the time. She also confirmed that if we hadn't brought Willow in tonight, we wouldn't have been able to have brought her in tomorrow. We let her go.

We are now a 3 cat household.

Car Talk-based geekery.

Tue, 29 Sep 2009 03:26:05 GMT

A caller on Car Talk this week asked the guys to confirm something her co-worker had told her. As a person involved in emergency medicine (I didn't catch her exact involvement) she often sees people brought in suffering from CO poisoning from boating. Again, I didn't catch exactly how come fishers/boaters get exposed to CO to the point of needing medical care. One of her coworkers commented that the patients could have gotten the same effect by simply sitting in their car in a closed garage for an hour or so and bypassed the sunburns, boats, etc. Another of her coworkers (a resident) countered that modern car's emission systems are so good that one could run your tank dry in a closed garage and there would be hardly any CO buildup.

The Car Talk guys sided with the resident, noting that nowadays the needles on the emissions testers barely budge when testing a car, as compared with the old days when no emissions tester was needed to tell that lots of bad stuff was coming out the tailpipe. They suggested that you would be more likely to die from oxygen deprivation then CO poisoning.

Below the cut are my calculations and thoughts on the matter...

Some starting assumptions...

We are talking about an air-tight 1-car garage which is 3m tall, 5m wide and 5m deep (roughly 16'x16'x10'). At standard temperature and pressure there is 1mol of gas per 22.7 liters of volume. In the garage there are 75000 liters, enough room for 3300 mols of gas. The partial pressure of oxygen in the atmosphere is about 0.20 atmospheres, so about 0.20 of the gas in the room is is O2, or 660mols of O2. There are 32g/mol for O2, so a little over 21kg of O2. There's about 73kg of nitrogen in the room, for a total of about 94kg of gasses total.

I am assuming that the gasoline is roughly an isomer of heptane, so it'll be roughly C7H16 in chemical formula. The chemical equation balances with C7H16 + 11O2 ==> 7CO2 + 8H2O, so burning one mol (100g) of gas with 11 mols (352g) of O2 yields 7 mols (308g) of CO2 and 8 mols (144g) of water.

A liter of heptane masses about 680g, so for every liter (6.8mol) of gas burned, about 2.4kg (74.8mol) of O2 is consumed. That's about a ninth of the oxygen in the room. There are 585mols of O2 left in the room, so the partial pressure is about 18%. Still breathable. However, there is now an additional 48mols, about 2kg, of CO2 in the air, and an additional 1kg of water vapor, so the CO2 concentration is about 2kg/95.6kg, or 2%. That's enough to make you drowsy.

After the 2nd liter is burned, there's 510mols of O2 left, the partial pressure of O2 is 15%, which is enough to start impairing your performance and consciousness. There's an additional 2kg of CO2, pushing the concentration to 4% or so.

It seems a race to see which kills you first, the falling O2 levels or rising CO2 levels. The O2 seems to be falling by about 2%/liter, and the CO2 seems to be rising by the same amount. After about 5 liters burned (a bit more than 1 gallon), the O2 concentration and CO2 concentrations are both about 10%, and either of these levels alone will cause unconsciousness -- with more extremes both leading to death.

But I'd also be concerned about the engine of the car. After 5 liters of gas burned, the O2 levels in the air have fallen by half, equivalent to (say) the Mount Everest base camp. Would a standard car made for US domestic use be able to run well at that altitude? Would it overtax the ability of the emissions control system to eliminate partial combustion products? At what point would the engine be so starved of O2 that it would quit? More morbidly, which would die first, the car or the human?

Should I send it to the Car Guys?

Five Guys

Sun, 20 Sep 2009 16:40:43 GMT

A new Five Guys Burger and Fries place opened in Ithaca today. Five Guys is a relatively understated national chain specializing in, well, burgers and fries. Their menu consists of burgers, "little burgers", hot dogs, fries, and grilled cheese. The burgers come in hamburger, cheeseburger, bacon hamburger, and bacon cheeseburger, with two patties in the regular burgers and one patty in the little burgers.

Their pitch is good ingredients -- all beef burgers hand-made from fresh ground beef (80% lean), fries cut on site from sacks of Idaho potatoes, kosher hot dogs, etc -- and few frills. There are a large number of toppings, all of which are free, and they provide roasted peanuts (in shell) as an appetizer while you wait (self-serve).

When I got there at 11:30ish it was packed, with the line stretching a good thirty-feet from the counter to the door (as it had opened in Ithaca only 30min earlier). It didn't take long to make it to the counter, but I probably spent more time waiting for my grilled cheese (with mushrooms and tomato) and fries than waiting to order. It gave me plenty of time to observe how they worked, as the kitchen is completely exposed to the dining area.

It was very assembly-line oriented. There were five stations, which I'll call "veggie grill", "meat grill", "cold", "assembly", and "bag&fries". It was easiest to watch the assembly person (all the stations had multiple people working it, except assembly, and she was not a bottleneck), as she was a single person and most exposed. When an order came in, it goes to both cold and the grill; the cold takes buns and puts tomatoes, lettuce, etc on them, puts them on foil sheets, and passes them down, one whole order at a time, to the assembly person. She arranged them to her liking, and waited for the meat. When the grill was done with patties, a grillman would come over with patties (with and without cheese) to put on the waiting prepped buns. Then she would close up the sandwich, wrap it in foil, label it with either the order slip or a numbered sticker (indicating that this is sandwich 1, 2, 3, etc in the order), and once an order is ready passes it to the bag&fry station. The order slip is pulled off the sandwich and slapped onto the top bag on a stack, which is opened, the sandwiches loaded, and the cup of fries filled and added. Then they take a measured amount of fries and dump it in the bag on top of everything. Once that's done, they take the bag to the counter and call out the order number.

My opinion? The grilled cheese was moderately better than I expected. It was grilled on a bun (not sliced bread), using standard yellow American cheese. The cheese wasn't fully melted. I suspect the fresh tomato and (canned or grilled, not fresh) mushrooms did a good job of making what would have been horrid acceptable. The fries were pretty good. I'll try the cajun fries next time. I also suspect things might be faster at another time.

Sun, 20 Sep 2009 03:42:53 GMT

I've been watching some Dr.Who-and-related I haven't seen before lately. I've watched the first two stories from Sarah Jane Adventures over the past few days, and today Zahde brought over "Delta and the Bannermen" and "The Infinite Quest".

For those more into Who than I... Is Sarah Jane's address (13 Bannerman Rd) a coincidence or an homage (or, worse, foreshadowing).

Another question: Was "Delta and the Bannerman" typical of McCoy-era Dr.Who? What was the fan feeling concerning Mel as a Companion?

"The Infinite Quest" was pretty good.

It's International Talk Like A Pirate Day!

Sat, 19 Sep 2009 15:22:06 GMT

Now heave to and hand over your cargo or we'll sink your ship.

Wait, that's not in the proper spirit...

I know...

"Hello, I am calling to negotiate on behalf of the men who have taken over your ship. They wish to get $50,000,000 in return for the safe release of your crew, cargo, and ship...."

What? That's not how pirates talk?

Sat, 19 Sep 2009 05:38:45 GMT

Body aches, check, especially in arm and shoulder muscles, some in kidney region, some in legs, with no apparent cause.

Sore throat, mildly, but not much.

Fever, nope.

Runny/stuffy nose, no more than usual, definitely breathable, seemingly dry.

Chills, nope.

Fatigue, not really.

If things change, I'll let you know.

Unintended hurtfulness

Sun, 13 Sep 2009 20:27:53 GMT

skitten just came home crying from a music jam a couple of hours before it's end. Apparently, the hostess of the jam asked her to move to a different seat outside the main circle "so the musicians can join the circle".

If you are unaware, skitten went to college at a high-ranked music school, competed for 13 years in a Barbershop chorus and quartet, attends as many jams as she can, but doesn't play nearly as much as she had since her stroke 3 years ago. Currently she plays hammered dulcimer and voice, as there aren't that many 1-handed instruments she can either afford or is willing to play.

She considers herself to be a musician, and to be asked to move to make room for "the musicians" really hurt.

Funky Forest: The First Contact

Sun, 06 Sep 2009 04:25:20 GMT

I just finished watching Funky Forest: The First Contact, an unusual Japanese film I got on Netflix. It isn't bad; if it were bad, I wouldn't have watched the whole movie. But it is...strange.

An IMDB reviewer described it as like a David Cronenberg comedy. My feeling is that it maintains the tight, plot-driven focus of some great American movies like Amazon Women on the Moon and Kentucky Fried Movie. The movie features segments of stories, ranging from a few seconds to several minutes (the 150+minute movie had 44 chapters, which means the average chapter is 3m24s long, and each chapter corresponds to a break/jump from one segment to another). Many of the segments feature recurring story-lines or people, so there aren't 44 stories in this collection.

This is the work of 3 directors, each claiming credit for a total of 21 of the segments, and another 22 credited to "Interval" on the DVD (all three directors plus Interval claim credit on segment 44, "End Roll"). One director, 石井克人 (ISHII Katsuhito) directed four of the recurring stories. "Guitar Brothers" is about three "brothers" who live together who are apparently decidedly unattractive to women (for different reasons). I wouldn't say there was an overall plot to that story. "Anime Brothers" is about two brothers who are doing all the animation for an anime ostensibly written by Pero, a small dog (the elder of the brothers finds the situation with Pero and his interpreter to be "fishy", and believes the interpreter is the real director). We do get to see the finished animation. With "Babbling Hot Springs Vixens" it becomes quickly clear that the vixens are babbling more than the springs are. "HOMEROOM !!!!!!!!!" features the morning announcements of different classmates during a homeroom session in school -- for an oddly configured class. In addition to these four stories (ranging from 2 segments for Anime Brothers to 5 for Guitar Brothers), ISHII also directed two standalone segments, one featuring the "Mole Brothers", the other featuring a girl named Hataru. Overall, he gets credit for 65m of the movie.

The second director, 三木俊一郎, MIKI Shunichiro, is responsible for some of the more bizarre imagery in the work, as his three segments all involve odd prosthetics or puppetry of distinctly... well, it's clear that they are alive, and it's clear in two of the segments that they are considered normal in the world of the segments, but they are clearly not a product of our world. If you look at the DVD cover, you'll see in the upper left a pink thing in the upper left and two guys dressed in yellow fursuits. Those are from his segments. "Wanna Go For A Drink" is about an odd encounter a schoolgirl has in the school hallway. "Youth Classroom" takes place in the youth classroom of a school, while "After School Club" is based, well, you can probably guess. It's hard to say that there is an overall plot or theme, or reason, for these segments. Overall his segments account for 25m.

The third director, ANIKI, clocks in with one 46m story in three segments. This story, "Notti&Takefumi", is probably the most coherent story of the bunch, centered around two characters: a real cutie named Notti and a young schoolteacher named Takefumi. Notti was a student at Takefumi's school, but now they are/are not dating. This is the central conflict of this story -- Takefumi loves Notti and wishes they acted more like a couple (including going on a world trip together) while Notti has no real desire to be a couple. The first segment sets up their relationship, while the other two segments are them each telling about a dream they had. While the imagery and motifs of the dream sequences are fantasy, it's clear in the setup that they are dreams (the three segment titles are "Notti&Takefumi -- Prologue", "...-- Takefumi's Dream" and "...-- Notti's Dream"). The struggle of Notti&Takefumi's relationship is clearly reflected in their dreams: Takefumi spends his dream following the direction of Notti, while begging her to express her feelings towards him, while in Notti's dream Takefumi doesn't appear at all.

The "fourth director", Interval, has 22 segments, including a 3-minute intermission, taking a total of 7m46s, averaging 21s each (without the intermission, it's 13.6s each). With just a couple of exceptions the intervals are extensions or cuts from the other stories.

The stories are slightly interlocked via shared characters. Takefumi appears in "After School Club", while many of the characters across several stories meet up for a rather disastrous "Single's Picnic". Hataru is in the "Youth Class Room", and one of the Guitar Brothers is a coach in the After School Club.

While watching bits of it again to write this write-up, I noticed things which escaped me in the first viewing -- characters whose significance wasn't apparent until later in the film, for instance.

The DVD features the ability to watch the movie in order, or to watch just the segments which belong to each director. The latter ordering provides a somewhat more coherent picture, and is how I was able to break things out by director, but it isn't a real substitute to watching the movie in it's released order.

Looking for a Tiger

Wed, 02 Sep 2009 17:15:20 GMT

I want to upgrade my Mac to the most up-to-date Mac OS X it'll support: Mac OS X 10.4 "Tiger". I've already asked one friend and he thought he had an appropriate set of disks, but it turned out he had 10.3 "Panther", not "Tiger" (all his machines are currently running "Leopard", and he had to search to find the old install disks.

Anyone know where I can get Tiger?