The Ziggurat of Doom

Navy to Mask Swastika Look of Barracks in California - New York Times

The Navy plans to spend $600,000 for “camouflage” landscaping and rooftop adjustments so that 1960s-era barracks at the Naval Base Coronado near San Diego will no longer look like a Nazi swastika from the air.

You should all see The Mysterious Ticking Noise by the Potter Puppet Pals. It is nice and brain explody.

Buy a Laptop for a Child, Get Another Laptop Free - New York Times

And he is reaching out to the public to try to give the laptop campaign a boost. The marketing program, to be announced today, is called “Give 1 Get 1,” in which Americans and Canadians can buy two laptops for $399.
One of the machines will be given to a child in a developing nation, and the other one will be shipped to the purchaser by Christmas. The donated computer is a tax-deductible charitable contribution. The program will run for two weeks, with orders accepted from Nov. 12 to Nov. 26.

I guess this is an improvement, but it’s not really a great one, over the previous situation of not selling them to private individuals. This should reduce the demand for illicit OLPC’s, but not eliminate is. $400 is a lot to pay for a $200 laptop, especially when a $500 laptop is easy to find.
Previous Post: The Only Way, The Only Way, Redux

It’s a shame, but the Klingons vs. Furries bowling tournament has been postponed, on account of nobody telling the Klingons about it.

However, it looks like the Klingons are interested, just uninformed, and the tournament is likely to go forward at a future date.

We now return you to your regularly-scheduled brain dripping out of your ears.

Stanislav Petrov - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
24 years ago today, the Earth didn’t die in nuclear fireball, and it’s probably all because of this man.
(Links from all over the place reminded me)

So, my crappy Time Warner-provided DVR broke on Monday, and I missed maybe five to ten minutes of the Heroes premier. I don’t think I care. I don’t have high hopes for this season. I’ve seen mentions in a few places that major writing talent left near the end of last season, which explains a lot. More detail, and spoilers, below the cut.

(Oh, and I added The Extratextuals to the links section, because it looks like a cool new blog. TV/pop-culture stuff.)
Read the rest of this entry »

Which I shall add to our taglines as soon as I get the chance. (also I will add more links to photos later)

Yes, the XKCD meetup was this weekend, and I live-carbon-blogged it as we were there (read: I took notes in a notebook. I wish I had a laptop…).

Read the rest of this entry »

The quasi-official XKCD meetup was yesterday and I’ll let Rhadamanthos give the real update as he was live blogging (into a notebook), but I needed to post this here for everyone to see.

Who’s this appearing on Cory Doctorow’s blag dressed as Cory Doctorow? Why it’s our very own Rhadamanthos.

Remember PostSecret? This is better.

My new grandmother that I got in a package deal with my wife has a really, really sweet tooth. She gave my wife a lot of old dessert recipes straight out of the fifties. A lot of them are really dated, really good, and usually involve jello. This one is kind of the exception. It’s really good, but doesn’t involve jello and isn’t dated. It’s cake frosting, and it’s not like anything you’ve ever had out of a can or from a bakery. It’s light, fluffy, and creamy without being overly sweet and sticky.

Ingredients

• 4 Tbsp AP Flour
• 1 Cup Milk (More fat = better tasting)
• .5 Cup Shortening
• .5 Cup Butter
• 1.25 Cup Granulated Sugar
• 1 Tbsp Vanilla

Directions

1. Whisk together milk and flour and gently heat to a light simmer, stirring constantly. The flour will start to thicken just before boiling, and you don’t want to scorch your milk or the flavor will be off. Remove from heat to cool fully.
2. No seriously, it’ll take like 30 minutes to cool.
3. Cream the butter and shortening with a mixer until they lighten in color. Add sugar and vanilla and beat until dissolved (about 5 minutes).
4. Add milk mixture and beat on high for at least five minutes to whip air into it.
5. OPTIONAL: Stash it in the fridge overnight, bring up to room temperature, and beat until soft. This gives all the flavors time to mingle and improves the texture for reasons I’m not entirely clear about.
6. This will be enough to give a 9×13 cake a very generous frosting. It is very light though, so it won’t stick well to the sides of a cake. Best to leave the cake in the baking dish and just frost the top.
7. See that milk in the ingredients list? Yeah. Stow the left overs and frosted cake in the fridge.

Notes

• Vanilla can be replaced with any flavored oil like peppermint extract, or with dark rum.
• Don’t frost the cake till it’s fully cooled. This is almost always true, but especially with this frosting.

Dynamist Blog: More on Swearing

Growing up in a nonswearing household, I heard plenty of words like “dadburned” and “dadgum.” But it’s true they’d sound weird on HBO. In my high school production of Ten Little Indians, the drama teacher substituted liberal use of the shocking Britishism “bloody,” which wouldn’t shock anybody in South Carolina, for the offensive “damn.” Then there are the Shakespearian expletives like “swounds” and “sblood” (short for “God’s wounds” and “God’s blood), which actually require footnotes. The most ingenious use of dramatic swearwords is, not surprisingly, on Battlestar Galactica, where, in keeping with the idea of a recognizable but different human civilization, the crew uses the all-purpose words frack and fracking, which don’t offend any TV censors.

Frellin’ A!

Studies show that 28 percent of adults spend less time socializing because of the internet, and a full 20 percent have less sex because they’re on the internet.

In related news, here’s Bill Gates getting hit with a pie.

Some of you may remember the XKCD where Randall Munroe urged Jim Davis to throw off his corporate shackles and go out in a blaze of dadaist glory.

Well, he hasn’t. That would be awesome though. What has happened is that someone has begun publishing re-done sections of Garfield comics without Garfield’s thought bubbles. Anyone who wants to can re-do a comic, leading to myriad interpretations of a man talking to his cat. The effect can be astounding, as seen here.

Also read the description at the bottom of the page, where he details the idea of the project.

Iron Man trailor.

Pretty cool-looking.

Robert Jordan has finally kicked the bucket. As usual, Slashdot has all relevant links.

The Interesting bit: Apparently, several months ago Jordan got his wife and his cousin (brother?) together and told them how it ends. ALL OF IT. How all the dangling threads and major problems get resolved. He was also a decent way into writing the last book, Memories of Light, so there’s a decent chance that someone will be able to at least *finish* his series, if not exactly in the way he would have wanted it, then at least close.

Nintendo has confirmed online battles in Smash Bros Brawl! Too bad it’s not out until December.

I’ve pre-ordered this already. Now I just need to get the Wii/Friend code from everyone I know…

Ghost Hound

Same writer and director as Lain; original concept? Masamune Shirow.

Comes out in a month.

Potty Humor: My Urban Dictionary Says This Is Funny … - Deadspin

Today is an awesome day for Xbox Live Arcade, as two seminal Dreamcast classics have been announced as coming to the online distribution platform. One is Ikaruga, the color-switching top-down shoot-em-up that was the cause of many thrown controllers in the early days of the Ziggurat. The other is quirky rhythm… shooter… space… thing, Rez.

Both will be in full, glorious HD, as will shiny-looking side-scrolling shmup Omega Five.

We live in glorious times, especially for shmup fans.

Skip work, make babies, says Russian governor - Yahoo! News

The governor of a central Russian province urged couples to skip work on Wednesday and make love instead to help boost Russia’s low birth-rate.

And if a woman gives birth in exactly nine months time — on Russia’s national day on June 12 — she will qualify for a prize, perhaps even winning a new home.

In Soviet Russia, babies make you [rich]!
(Via)