Recently in Recommendations Category

This last weekend, I bought a Surefire G2 Nitrolon high-output flashlight at a Reno gun show, about $35. It's a very good alternative to the more expensive, earlier metal version, the Surefire 6P. For those of my friends who are getting into defensive pistolcraft for the first time - and who have budget constraints - I recommend this lightweight version.

Today's QOTD is a bit of background on the graphic novel "Roswell, Texas" by L. Neil Smith and Scott Beiser, which has been serialized in webcomic form on the Bighead Press website. It's a kick, and I recommend it highly.

As I mentioned a couple of days ago, I met my friend Dale Seago at the Pleasanton Highland Games this last weekend. Both Dale and our dojo chum Garland were wearing the new version of the Cold Steel Special Projects Scottish Dirk, which Dale reviews today in Swordforum.com. I was deeply impressed, and took Dale's advice to order it from the vendor indicated by Froogle as the lowest price supplier, Premium Knives. Noticing how Garland's unmodified Cold Steel-supplied dirk sheath loop seemed flimsy, I took Dale's advice at the Games to pick up a Scottish Dirk Frog from onsite vendor Ravenwood Leather, for the amazingly low price of $10.

I'm looking forward to receiving the knife in a few days.

I've had this recipe pinned to my refrigerator door, meaning to transcribe it here. It's a baked chicken recipe which I've made a couple of times in the last few years, after having had it at my friends' house a few years ago. You need these ingredients:

• One large, whole chicken
• 2 tablespoons butter
• One clove of chopped garlic
• 1/4 cup cooking wine
• 1/4 cup soy sauce
• 1/2 cup pineapple juice
• 1/2 lemon
• 1/2 onion

Stuff the chicken with the half lemon and half onion. Place it breast-up in a deep baking dish, and pour all the ingredients listed above in the dish around and over the chicken. Wrap the dish a couple of times in aluminum foil, taking care to leave some space between the foil and the chicken, and place the dish in an oven pre-heated to 375 degrees Fahrenheit. Cook 30 minutes, then remove from the oven and turn the bird over, using a baster to spread more of the resulting broth over the bird. Re-cover with the foil and cook another 90 minutes. Allow the bird to "rest" for about 15 minutes before serving. The chicken should be incredibly tender and moist. Enjoy.

We are born, so to speak, provisionally, it doesn't matter where; it is only gradually that we compose, within ourselves, our true place of origin, so that we may be born there retrospectively.

Rilke, as quoted by Coetzee, as quoted by Donald Ritchie, as collected in "The Japan Journals", as editted by Leza Lowitz
p441

Last week, I took a coyote, a feral hog, and assisted in a friend's take of another feral hog, using one 150-grain Remington Core-Lokt in .308 caliber shot from a Jeff Cooper edition Steyr Scout in each encounter. This particular round (or remains thereof) I dug out from underneath the skin of the one I took:

This particular round hit the hog midships, high, and completely busted the spine, spleen, and vented the lower lobes of the lungs, causing pneumothorax evidenced by a "deflating balloon" sound when I first moved the hog carcass. Intererestingly, the lead core seems to have punched through the hog, leaving the copper jacket:

Here, I show the path of the bullet, taken by the hog from about 110 metres, entering starboard and (partially) exiting port:

You know, in this shot, I look almost as (literally) knackered as the hog itself. East Texas is hot and humid this time of year...

...yesterday at Vertical Challenge 2006 at San Carlos Airport, California, a car hoisted down the length of a runway, then dropped it:

I'm very happy I had my Olympus E-1 kit in the trunk of my car, since my friend and I stumbled on this airshow quite by accident, seeing all the helicopter activity from the highway whilst driving north intending to watch the jumbos landing at SFO, from the shoreline at Burlingame.

Scott Beiser and L. Neil Smith's Roswell, Texas is now online, serialized in webcomic fashion. I believe that my dear, recently deceased friend Chris Tame has a cameo somewhere in the comic's future.

L. Neil Smith finally does a real blog, "L. Neil Smith at Random", with comments enabled. I've long thought that Neil's writing would fit the format, and now I'm sure of it.

One of the pleasures of having a Netflix subsription is being able to add oddball titles to my queue, click-and-forget, and receive it later as a "surprise." One such title is a short wine documentary, "John Cleese's Wine for the Confused":

Wine snobs, beware: Monty Python's witty John Cleese aims to educate the masses with this enlightening, snoot-free wine guide. Cleese guides wine novices through the basics -- finding wines you like, getting the best value, and serving and storing wine at home. His vintner's tour includes lessons in wine vocabulary and identifying subtle flavors. Not a fan of snobbery in the least, Cleese also reveals how to cork up condescending sommeliers.

Cleese has a house on the Central California coast, and decided - on a shoestring budget, which he freely admits on camera - to visit a few of the local wineries, surveying products of the handful of "great grapes" (e.g. Cabernet Sauvignon, Pinot Noir). I found the tips about finding bargains in a wine seller's shop particularly useful.

Unlike a commentator in the IMDB entry, I'm not surprised Cleese would do such a documentary: in the early 90's, working for a company in London, I found the tedium of mandatory training videos greatly lessened with Cleese as presenter. He has an impressive resume of this type of stuff.

K. Eric Drexler informs me that his book "Engines of Creation: The Coming Era of Nanotechnology" has a new home on his website (migrated from its previous hosting at the Foresight Institute).

Check out the attribution on the entry page... I did the work 10 years ago, but I deeply appreciate the continuing credit.

William Faulkner, in his acceptance speech for the Nobel Prize for Literature, called upon writers of the future to not write merely "for the glands." Of course, at that moment, Faulkner was being rewarded for being the best writer for the glands this country has ever known. Incest, serial killing, insanity, race war, castration, burial of the dead, biblical flood, hunting bear, rape with a corn cob - Faulkner did it all. The guy played our genome like a xylophone. Faulkner, in a suddenly noble moment, called upon writers... to transcend the endocrinological. He didn't set the best example.

Joe Quirk
Sperm Are from Men, Eggs Are from Women, p118

The Dissident Frogman has incorporated my Japanese translations of his popular "Support Denmark" banners into his multilingual contributions archive page.

My thanks to knowledgeable friends Mariko and Garth for their thorough critiques of my pre-final draft. Thanks also for feedback on the issue of translating the original phrase "the legacy of the West", which was problematic, by these people on the honyaku mailing list: Richard Thieme, Peter Durfee, Benjamin Barrett, J.C. Helary, and James Sparks.

Charles Hudson has written an interesting opinion piece on the potential of Yelp (which I mentioned recently.) Thanks to Matthew P. for the pointer. Excerpt:

Yelp is collecting a ton of data from those who take the time to rate and review restaurants, hotels, etc. In the same way that Junglee/Amazon revolutionized how people find books and other goods by using collaborative filtering, I can see Yelp (at scale) achieving a similar aim. Right now, the "missing lens" is the ability to filter reviews and ratings based on similar interests. I would love the ability to use Yelp to filter reviews and ratings based on how similar other reviewers' scores are to ones that I have entered. This is something that nobody seems to be doing today. Ultimately, this collaborative filtering might prove even more useful than reviews provided by my friends.

Some friends of a friend started a geographically-oriented business review site, Yelp.com, with an apparent emphasis on restaurant reviews (but an ontology supporting very many more categories.)

I've joined on her recommendation, and have been surprised to discover just how useful it's been already: I've found some nearby places I'd never considered before, and am now using to drive some of my purchases at local specialty shops.

Now, whether Yelp is another Next Big Thing remains to be seen. It's a closed system, with no apparent provision for RSS syndication of the content we the users add to the review base, and relatedly, no leveraging of microformat standards such as hReview, a serious issue (thanks to Mike Linksvayer for pointing me to this recently.)

Yelp seems to have purchased a GIS-oriented business database, and coded some Google Maps integration into their interface. Rather nice, but entirely US-oriented, with no indication they're ready to scale into the English-speaking markets of Tokyo (big expat and traveller population) and other locales.

Speaking of which, I just tried inviting a good friend, an American living in Panama who could be a productive member of the Yelp community, and he sent me back this, reprinted with his permission:

'Hi Russell,

These morons ask for a zip code and won't accept my sign-up without one. I see this sort of shit all the time. When are US geeks going to get a clue the the US is not the world and that not everyone who has internet also has a "zip" code? So Thanks, but no thanks. I won't sign up with jingoistic idiots. Please feel free to pass along my exact words, if it pleases you.

Regards,
Sandy'

Wow. Well, he does have a point. I see this as one of those "We weren't planning to be so successful" scaling issues. Can't count the number of times I've seen this. I think the Yelpers really should have generalized their GIS integration to allow world-wide registration, from the very beginning. I have lots of friends in Europe, Asia, and South America who won't be able to join due to this and related issues. Maybe agitating in the Yelp forums about this might help; I've noticed they do tend to pay attention to issues of interface (e.g. marking businesses as closed or moved) so they may listen. Of course, they may be planning some kind of world-market rollout, but it would help if they advertised that somewhere prominent.

In the meantime, I'm going to use the hell out of it until and unless it ceases to be interesting. It's a much more convenient place for me to bulk-load all those pictures of food and storefronts I take in my travels, more so than the Movable Type blogging interface I'm using here, and since most of my reviews are locale-specific, it's probably a better place for my rants and raves about local businesses (and ones I visit in other cities.)

Just minutes after I'd complained in my latest blog posting about the lack of taxonomies for doing business reviews, Mike Linksvayer leaves a comment to the contrary:

In-blog reviews, no hacking required beyond copy and paste.

In the fullness of time these will be aggregated by someone for viewing in the context of similar reviews. On the other hand, reviews posted at review sites may be similarly aggregated.

OK, now trying out hReview Creator:

Yesterday, I visited Ramen Rama in Cupertino, California, with my longtime friend Suzu. Here's another of what Brian Micklethwait refers to as a "Billion Monkeys" moment:

Some other tech industry friends of Suzu have started a company called Yelp, whose product is a business reviews website, where Suzu and I have reviewed the ramen shop. I've not populated this blog with restaurant review entries to my satisfaction, since the blog format is not granular enough (without hacking) to support a taxonomy for star ratings and such, so I'm going to experiment with posting my reviews on Yelp and pointing to them from here. Putting my own reviews in the context of others' should add value to the opinions.

Just saw a telecast version of this print article on Foxnews, "Cruisin' For Cash"; a small town (Littleton, Massachusetts) police chief, John Kelly, is using carside adverts - no tax money - to fund his police cruisers:

The chief says he felt he had little choice but to take an unusual, much-criticized step to upgrade his patrol cars. He’s selling advertising space on the quarter panels and rear bumper of patrol cars to pay for the new wheels.

12 grand a year for three years earns a local business the right to put a banner ad on the back and sides of a town police car. This allows Kelly to buy all new lights, sirens, radios, scanners, shotgun and assault rifle racks, and an on-board law enforcement laptop computer. Plus, it covers the entire cost of the vehicle lease. A local grocer, Donnelans, bought space to pay for the first new cruiser.

Brilliant, and if someone proposes yet another obnoxious bond measure (or tax) in my town in California, I'll point them to this example as a superior alternative.

Meant to put this up a few weeks ago: me and Dale Seago at a recent (21 January 2006) Rabbie Burns Birthday celebration in front of San Francisco's Edinburgh Castle Pub:

It was busy that night: I managed to snag the last booth upstairs in the mezzanine area, with a sightline into the area where we expected the haggis to be piped in. It took an hour and a half to get our fish & chips, which were worth the wait; they're made at some nearby mom & pop shop and delivered in. In the meantime, we enjoyed a few of the most excellent Belhaven peat-smoked ales, my first time trying that, and I thank Dale for introducing it to me.

The festivities were well worth the trip up to the city. The piper was very good - and looked every bit the part, wish I'd snagged a good shot of him - and the Burns poetry readings were rousing, marred only ever so slightly by some rather self-consciously narcissistic political posturing on the part of a (I'm not making this up) Scottish socialist lesbian Buddhist working class nun.

The night culminated in a hearty reading of "Address to a Haggis" followed by a free-for-all of flying forks in a frenzy of delectation. I managed to snag a small amount, happy I had any, and returned to the booth to enjoy it... and discovered to my gratitude that Dale had managed to snag double servings for both of us! I quite enjoyed it, and may even keep a small stock of it in cans for emergencies.

Still going through my burgeoning archive of travel photos. Here's a ride I took - a bungee chair - in Beijing's Wangfujing shopping district. The guy on the chair is not me:

I'd had a bit to drink when I decided to do this myself; the boisterously friendly Chinese guy who shared the chair with me (since it was cheaper for 2, cheapest for 3) was plastered. I bought a copy of the video taken by the elderly, cage-mounted VHS camera, without having taken into account (I'd been drinking, remember) that the camera was recording in PAL format... doh! Eventually, I'll get it converted to NTSC, or directly to MPEG. Should be fun to see.

I occasionally attend some rather memorable lectures on topics of extropian interest, such as Aubrey de Grey's lectures at Stanford last summer. I've gotten permission to post some of the recordings I've taken with my iPod/iTalk combination, but have not yet aggregated those recordings for public consumption. With yesterday's announcement by audioblog.com concerning their "unmetered bandwidth" plan, I just may have found my venue. Stay tuned.

I took a break from studying this evening and visited a number of local stores to buy Danish food and booze products. Here's what I came back with, minus duplicates (I had to buy more than one of the tins of ginger cookies):

From left to right, purchases from various stores in Cupertino, California:

From Trader Joe's:

• Rosenborg Danish Blue cheese
  
• Silver Goat Organic Feta cheese
  
• "The Queen's Cookies" Ginger Spice Cookies (made in Denmark for Trader Joe's)
  

From Whole Foods:

• Denmark's Finest Havarti cheese
  
• Denmark's Finest Havarti cheese with dill
  
• Rosenborg Danish Blue cheese
  
• Blue Danish Castello Triple Cream cheese
  
• Fontina Danish Cheese
  

From Safeway:

• Denmark's Finest Fontina cheese
  
• Denmark's Finest Blue cheese
  
• Primo Taglio Havarti with Dill cheese
  

Especially notable and tasty are the ginger spice cookies made under contract in Denmark for Trader Joe's:

The thing that's missing from the first picture above: Danish beer. None of the three supermarkets above had any Danish beer - assumedly Tuborg and Carlsberg - and the one place I think might have such beer (Cost Plus World Market) closed tonight before I could check out their stock. I'll try there tomorrow night. In the meantime, I'm enjoying my Havarti with Newcastle Brown ale tonight.

I encourage all of my readers to participate in this Danish buycott.

The Dissident Frogman has updated his "Support Denmark" banner blog posting with banner versions in additional languages such as German and Simplified Chinese.

The Dissident Frogman is actively maintaining and updating a blog entry with "Support Denmark" graphics in multiple languages. Translations in additional languages are forthcoming (Traditional and Simplified Chinese, Japanese, Farsi, Arabic, Vietnamese, and Korean, to the best of my knowledge.)

Oh, yeah: go out and stock up on Havarti cheese... it's not only a show of support contra the recent Islamist boycotts and violence against the Danes (and random others in their neighborhood) but it's also damned fine cheese.

I picked up a decent sword stand in San Francisco's Chinatown yesterday. It's 23 inches high, $25 (apparently non-negotiable in the store from which I bought it) and comes in four matt-lacquered wood pieces with a set of wood screws. Power screwdriver in hand, I assembled it in a couple of minutes. Here it is with my Bugei Samurai Koshirae Katana:

The base is indented to hold the end of the saya in place, and seems fairly sturdy. They're available in most of the tourist gift shops in San Francisco's Chinatown. Not as common as the conventional over-the-mantlepiece (or in the tokonoma) horizontal stand, but has a nice "shotgun ready rack" aspect to it.

My pilot friend David recommended this colossal collection of aviation-related essays by Gene Whitt.

Two days ago, I bought a copy of "Mathematica 5.2 For Students" from the campus bookstore for $150 after tax. This is the same software that sells for around $2000 after tax to non-students. It's a fantastic package, and I'm happy I bought it. However, yesterday, after having already installed a copy on my home's dual G5, I tried to install a copy on my PowerBook. Wolfram's licencing scheme doesn't allow that: I could either buy their $100/year "Premium Support" contract, which would allow me to run other copies on other nodes, or buy another copy. If I'd paid full boat for the original copy, that might have made sense, but at the student discount, it made more sense to actually buy another package entirely. FYI for science and engineering students.

I'm just about to crash soon, having come back from the first of a multi-day Bujinkan training seminar by Arnaud Cousergue of Paris (Vincennes, actually) at the Bujinkan Martial Arts Center in Sacramento, a couple of hours' drive from here.

That's Dr. Pete Lohstroh, a UC Davis reproductive biologist, and myself. Pete's interested in medical nanotechology too, by the way, but that's deliberately off topic. I really do meet cool people in this art.

The shiner I acquired Thursday night is even more pronounced in this photo, but it doesn't hurt at all anymore. On a related note, Arnaud ended the day insisting on the use of padded training weapons through the end of the year, for various reasons with which I entirely agree. To that end, on the way back from Sack-of-Tomatoes to Saint Jose, I stopped at the Home Despot near the Sacto dojo and acquired the requisite materials:

- a $1.97 bag of thin 6' bamboo rods from the Garden section
- a $1.97 6' section of 5/8" inside diameter foam copper pipe insulation

I then duct taped 3 pinky-width lengths of the bamboo together at 9-inch intervals, put that inside the foam, and placed styrofoam caps at the ends, duct taping those. I finished by taping the entire thing lengthwise.

Looks surprisingly good, and not at all like a late-night vodka fueled project. I took photos of every step of the project which I will be posting in a few days.

Time to crash now.

I've discovered recently that if you're in market for a used SCUBA rental wetsuit at a dive shop, wait until Tuesday or Wednesday in most markets to buy it: the cosmetically better-looking suits are usually taken by renters on the weekend and returned on Monday. You'll find those better looking suits clean and dried in the following couple of days before the rental cycle starts over.

This advice is intended for those who understand and don't mind the fact that SCUBA divers tend to urinate in their wetsuits, especially to keep warm in Monterey Bay waters...

I'm rested now and recovered from last weekend's attendance at the 4-day tactical shotgun course at Front Sight Firearms Training Institute near Las Vegas, Nevada. I surprised myself by making Distinguished Graduate, so I'm now qualified to come back to attend the 4 Day Advanced Tactical Shotgun course. On the second day of training, Greg Carroll snapped this pic of me after the two of us had done our respective runs through the outdoor canyon "clean the hostage takers out" simulator exercise:

The (visible) firearm is my Benelli M1 Super 90, with a nylon tactical sling and a GG&G M3 Tactical Illuminator mounting rail in the 2 o'clock position on the foreend, not the 10 o'clock position GG&G recommends on their website (experience in a previous course having shown me that, as a right-handed longgunner, the 10 o'clock position allows the light to bump on.)

I'd last done a tactical shotgun course about 4 years ago, and so I was quite interested to see how training doctrine had changed in respect of that weapon at Front Sight. The men in the evolution I attended - those 13 in the class who were there for the full 4 days - were all at least previous attendees at another weapon systems class (e.g. defensive handgun, practical rifle) so the class was run at a slightly accelerated pace befitting the audience. Attendees were about evenly divided between cops, active duty military (a Marine heading back to Iraq soon) and private citizens, all of whom were treated exactly the same by the instructional staff, the excellent Chuck Burnett and John Pierson.

One difference I noticed was the much heavier emphasis on incorporating movement, keeping the fight dynamic, and training that way to the limited extent allowed in the "square range environment." I was particularly pleased that, after the Monday (4th day) afternoon skills test, and the "load and go" indoor tactical simulator, I was allowed to do several rounds of 2-man team shooting on the move, with my new friend David L. Loads of fun, and I was pleased to find that a walking skill I'd been cultivating the last few years, walking fast with very short tank-tread heel/toe action to keep the hips and shoulders on level planes, allowed me to get good hits moving both forward and backward, without muzzle bob.

I'm at a level of membership at Front Sight that allows me to take any firearms course free for the rest of my life, much like some golf club memberships. So, I get to take these courses again and again, which allows me not only to revisit, revive, and refine my skills, but also to work out equipment issues. I've discovered I really don't like the Lyman TacStar SideSaddle mounted on the left side of the receiver: it catches on my clothing, when loaded it dampens recoil (and hence reliability) on this recoil-operated weapon, and with the standard provided cross-receiver screw, was coming loose even though I'd installed it properly and Lock-Tited it. I guess a couple of thousand rounds will do that to the Lock-Tite. That, and I'm leery of over-tightening that screw for fear of impeding bolt travel. Oh, and there's the issue of potentially "egging out" the screw holes on the aluminum receiver. My friend David assures me that, should I care to keep the SideSaddle, I can send the weapon to a gunsmith who specializes in Class 3 firearms with aluminum receivers, experienced in setting up weapons to resist receiver failure, but I'm going to switch to keeping my slug rounds on a belt carrier anyway.

Nor am I going to solve the "problem" of having extra ammo by changing out the tube magazine from a 5 to an 8 round capacity. This is my home invasion repellant device... if I can't solve The Problem with what's available in that weapon, then I'm in a very serious situation indeed. I'm more and more preferring lighter, more maneuverable weapons the more I train, with as few bells and whistles as I can get away with. I've heard more than one long arms instructor over the years comment on how students will arrive at a course with their all-singing, all-dancing Space Gun rigs, everything mounted everywhere, only to find themselves quickly shedding equipment after the first day... especially when training in the 105 F degree desert heat. Heh.

Recommendation: check out Estate Cartridge's low-recoil 12-gauge 9-pellet 00 SWAT loads. I've used this buckshot at a previous shotgun course, and had made the decision to attend this most recent course with too little lead time to order more of the same for this class. So, I had a mere few dozen of them to use at various times during this course, instead using a mix of Winchester and Federal buckshot for most exercises. No comparison. At half the price of Federal, the Estate-branded cartridges gave outstandingly tight and nicely distributed (e.g. no annular "donuts of death") patterns, turning heads on the firing line and eliciting a number of "what are you shooting, man?" enquiries.

I had the pleasure of remaking the acquaintance of at least one old friend, who was taking a course on an adjacent range. Additionally, I was happy to have a couple of libertarian friends, longtime (but previously untrained) gunowners, take the full 4 Day Defensive Handgun course on the same weekend. Both men, Alan and Chris, came away from the experience very much more competent than when they arrived.

...the digital (PDF) version I'm reading now, but Charlie Stross tells his readers not to do so. I will, however, be buying several copies from Amazon as gifts to friends. Damn it's good!

If you can, within principle, take over and adopt whatever name your enemy calls you, do so. It shuts them up very handily.

L. Neil Smith

I bought a 40GB iPod about 8 months ago, and have worked that thing like a prom date, using it in my car, at the gym, at school (both for listening & for recording lectures) and simply for walking around. A couple of days ago, I was greeted with the "sad iPod" icon which indicated the unit's hard drive had failed. Though I'd bought the unit at a discount at the campus bookstore, I called the local Apple Store and told them my situation. I was told to come in, they'd have a replacement waiting for me, no charge, covered under the unit's 1-year standard warranty.

This isn't the first time I've dealt with Apple when I've had an issue with their equipment and/or operating system. I bought an AppleCare contract with my new dual G5 a few months ago, and have found that my calls are answered promptly, and the technicians will hang onto the phone doggedly until any problems are run to ground. At least in my own case - I can't speak for others - I'd rate Apple as having a superb culture of customer service all around.

I recently did some driving through Nevada and California, working remotely from a number of hotels. I loaded up my iPod (which I connect to a Pioneer black box installed behind the dash, itself interfaced with the sound system's head unit) with music, podcasts, and audio books (almost all of it purchased on iTunes,) including an unabridged copy of:

"Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side to Everything," by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner.

I thoroughly enjoyed the 6 hours of sometimes humorous, often surprising and counterintuitive anecdote. I highly recommend it: I do enjoy economic storytelling, from Braudel to Postrel to Friedman Jr. and now these guys.

Anyone else encountered this book or its audio equivalent?

I will add the qualification here that the work does gloss over the correlation between concealed carry laws and violent crime, primarily since the authors took John R. Lott as the authority on the matter... which is a double shame, since there's much there to explore, and since Lott seems to have screwed the pooch with respect to the issue of academic integrity.

Curt Howland has pointed me to a relevant blog entry hosted by the Ludwig von Mises Institute.

A new online bookseller recommended by a member of my extropians mailing list: "Bill of Rights Press," for those hard-to-find titles that Laissez-Faire Books won't carry.

The Sci Fi Channel will be airing all episodes of Firefly starting 22 July 2005.

I recently tried a little surprise from Austin, Texas, sold at Trader Joe's supermarket in northern California: Tito's Handmade Vodka. It's the cleanest-tasting vodka I've ever had, and I highly recommend it for those who mix their martinis with vodka rather than gin (I admit to doing both on occasion.)

Like many, I keep a pocketchange bank on my desk, where I throw my end-of-the-day coin shrapnel. Until recently, I'd taken the 8.9% hit on Coinstar exchanges at a local supermarket, since I value my time highly enough not to spend it counting out 6 pounds of coin. A few days ago, I noticed that one of the options on the Coinstar machine allowed for a conversion of my coins to stored value on an anonymous Starbuck's card... with 0% commission. Since I regularly drink Starbuck's coffee - when a Peet's is not convenient - I found this a rather good deal.

Cambridge biogerontologist Aubrey de Grey will be speaking next week at Stanford University, on "Why the prospect of dramatic life extension matters now." Talk will occur Wednesday evening 7:00-8:30 PM, 8 June 2005, at the Clark Center Auditorium. Thanks to Tyler Emerson for forwarding this to me; I do plan to attend.

Bruce Sommer informs me that Apple has released the online trailer for "Serenity," the film adaptation of Joss Whedon's tragically short-lived "Firefly" television series. It looks fantastic!

In the heart of Beijing is the huge, well-stocked Wangfujing Bookstore. If you need maps, there are thousands of them available on the first (ground) floor, just inside the main doors. English-language books can be found on the 3rd floor. Here's a pic I snapped with my Treo 650 cameraphone:

Beware, beware of Baijiu! Within my first two hours in Beijing, I was taken out for kebabs and beer by my friend Serin. We met this affable guy, Ken, who'd enquired "Naguoren? (where ya from?)" and offered me one of his sealed shot glasses of baijiu. This was an 80-proof (40%) standard formula. After two shots, he brought out a bottle whose name translates from Chinese simply as "56 Percent." We shared that bottle. Apparently, I pulled out my Sony CyberShot to Capture the Moment:

I tried red eye reduction in iPhoto in an attempt to clear up my eyes in this photo, but apparently, the red-eye in this case is not a camera artifact.

I paid dearly the next morning for this act of intercultural male booze bonding, comparable only to an episode I experienced after boot camp, half a lifetime ago, when I swore, "I'll never drink that again."