Archive for June, 2007

Players, Game and my Disappointment with Humanity

Friday, June 29th, 2007

I have just fin­ished read­ing The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists by Neill Strauss and I can safely say that it was an enlight­en­ing read. I would like to highly rec­om­mend this book to any­one and every­one, women espe­cially. Although the book is, osten­si­bly, an auto­bi­o­graphic nar­ra­tive about one man’s jour­ney into the soci­ety of male pickup artists, it says an awful lot about human nature, inter­ac­tions and frailties.

I found the book enlight­en­ing because it has opened up my per­cep­tion to a new way of look­ing at social inter­ac­tions and manip­u­la­tions. Sadly, since being so enlight­ened, I have seen quite a few exam­ples of how pathet­i­cally weak-willed and eas­ily manip­u­lated peo­ple can be. The Game also has a fair amount of com­men­tary on the robot nature of many people’s social inter­ac­tions. Having recently seen some strong exam­ples of peo­ple giv­ing in to their robotic reac­tions, I find myself very dis­ap­pointed in some peo­ple specif­i­cally and human­ity in gen­eral. It will likely take me a bit of time to re-equilibrate my per­cep­tions and moral­ity but until that hap­pens, I’m going to stick with a gen­eral sense of dis­ap­point­ment for a while.

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Like a block of sex

Thursday, June 28th, 2007

Rogue Smokey Blue cheese is like a block of sex. I recently found myself in the cheese sec­tion of one of our fancier local gro­cer­sand found myself buy­ing cheese, as often hap­pens to me in such sit­u­a­tions. One of the cheeses that I bought was Rogue Smokey Blue, which I chose because I wanted a blue cheese and there was a sign claim­ing that this par­tic­u­lar one had won some award. Upon return­ing to my place of res­i­dence and try­ing the var­i­ous cheeses that I had obtained, I dis­cov­ered that I had cho­sen a real gem. So, if you’re look­ing for a good blue cheese, I highly rec­om­mend the Rogue Smokey Blue.

Posted in food & drink | 3 Comments »

4 Soviet States that are still around

Friday, June 22nd, 2007

In spite of the dis­so­lu­tion of the Soviet Union in 1991, four Soviet states still exist today. Although none of the four states have obtained inter­na­tional recog­ni­tion and have all been dis­avowed by Moscow, they are all de facto inde­pen­dent states.

Transnistria, a.k.a. Trans-Dniester or Pridnestrovie, exists within the inter­na­tional rec­og­nized bor­ders of Moldova. Transnistria cur­rently exists in a state of civil war with the rest of Moldova and is bor­dered by the Dniester River on the west and the Ukraine on the east.

Nagorno-Karabakh exists in the South Caucasus region of Azerbaijan. Unlike Transnistria, Nagorno-Karabakh has been par­tic­i­pat­ing in peace talks with both Azerbaijan and Armenia, never hav­ing esca­lated into open warfare.

The final two Soviet states, Abkhazia and South Ossetia exist within the bor­ders of Georgia. There has been open war­fare between Georgia and both South Ossetia and Abkhazia.

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Sailing Days

Wednesday, June 20th, 2007

The past few days here in Woods Hole have been stun­ningly beau­ti­ful; if the past few days had been women, they would have eas­ily been 10s. Of course, hav­ing boats in the water and beau­ti­ful days means that I had no choice but to go sail­ing. Sunday, I took out my dad’s old sail­fish, a won­drous lit­tle craft that’s hardly more than an over glo­ri­fied wind­surfer. I ended up toodling around in Little Harbor for about an hour, hav­ing a won­der­ful time. Monday, it was a bit windier and I ended up tak­ing the sail­fish and ven­tur­ing a lit­tle way out of Little Harbor. On my way back into Little Harbor, I was sail­ing on a broad reach and I started pick­ing up an immense amount of speed. As I started to really get going, I was made aware of some­thing that I had for­got­ten about sail­fish, sail­fish can plane. The front half of the sail­fish was com­pletely out of the water and I was going mighty fast. Sadly, I brought my GPS with me on Sunday but not on Monday so all I can say is that I was going sub­stan­tially faster on Monday than the 6.3 knots that I mea­sured on Sunday.

Yesterday (Tuesday), is when the big guns came out and the real fun began. Yesterday was Synchronicity, my catamaran’s, first sail of the sea­son. It was a nice, warmish day with mod­er­ate wind so Dave and I took Synchronicity out after work. We three quickly made our way out of Great Harbor and off into Vineyard Sound. As we passed Nobska Point and headed out into Vineyard Sound proper, the wind picked up a bit and we started tear­ing through the water. Having been cooped up all win­ter and hav­ing so much wind to play with, Synchronicity was more than a bit antsy so Dave and I, feel­ing bold, decided to let her have a bit of fun. Synchronicity was in the mood to take flight and, for the first time, we were kind enough to oblige her. The sen­sa­tion of being on a cata­ma­ran as the hull beneath you lifts out of the water is very sim­i­lar to the sen­sa­tion you expe­ri­ence in an air­plane the moment it lifts off the ground dur­ing take off. Investigating my GPS after the fact, we found that we had hit a max­i­mum speed of 14.9 knots, which I find to be admirable for Synchronicity’s first voy­age of the summer.

From this point for­ward, I’m intend­ing to go sail­ing after work every day that the weather is suf­fi­cient, except­ing those days when there’s an MBL soft­ball game. Simply put, I just love sail­ing; it’s one of my favorite things in the world and now I get to do a whole bunch of sail­ing again.

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Fortune Cookie: 2007 – 6-15

Sunday, June 17th, 2007

Keep the promises that you make.

Commentary: I do not break promises; my word is my bond.

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Ambrosia between two slices of bread

Wednesday, June 13th, 2007

(inclu­sive)

Coming home after an evening of light rev­elry, I found myself a might bit peck­ish. Finding myself in such a sit­u­a­tion and feel­ing it best to resolve mat­ters before I set sail for the shad­owy realm known to us as sleep, I set about mak­ing myself a sand­wich. Having availed myself of the bounty to be found at the most local super­mar­ket ear­lier in this day, I found a num­ber of won­drous sub­stances at the ready. Beginning with two slices of German Dark Wheat bread, I set myself upon the first ingre­di­ent that caught my atten­tion: chunky peanut but­ter. The peanut but­ter added to the mix, I found myself at a grand impasse: Nutella or rasp­berry pre­serves. Upon real­iz­ing that the joy of peanut but­ter and jam had crossed my pal­let more recently than the exquis­ite­ness of peanut but­ter and Nutella, I selected Nuitella to grace the slice of bread oppo­site my chunky peanut but­ter. Moments before I brought the Nutella coated bread and the chunky peanut but­ter coated bread together, a fan­tas­tic idea struck me.Coming to me in a flash was the notion that I could pour a bit of honey down upon the bread before seal­ing the sand­wich. This stroke of inspired genius led to the con­struc­tion of my first chunky peanut but­ter, Nutella and honey on dark wheat sand­wich ever. As sand­wiches go, this one has few par­al­lels or competitors.

Truly, I must have a muse hang­ing over my shoul­ders. Only a muse of truly divine merit could inspire me to devise such an ambrosial delight.

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HUGLAGHALGHALGHAL Soulcalibur IV!

Wednesday, June 13th, 2007

Soul Calibur IV has been announced for the Xbox 360 and PS3. For those of you that know me and my pref­er­ences in video games, you might have some idea of how very excited I am right now. For those of you that don’t know my fond­ness for the series, suf­fice it to say that I am very excited. Furthermore, for those that didn’t catch the ref­er­ence, HUGLAGHALGHALGHAL is taken from Jerk City (a puerile, offen­sive, not safe for work comic that I don’t rec­om­mend any­body read).

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Rock Band

Sunday, June 10th, 2007

I hap­pen to have a friend that works for Harmonix, cre­ators of Guitar Hero I & II, which pro­vided me a unique oppor­tu­nity ear­lier today (tech­ni­cally yes­ter­day). I got a chance to play a devel­op­ment ver­sion of Harmonix’s upcom­ing game Rock Band for a cou­ple hours and, I have to say, it is awe­some, really awe­some. I had to sign a NDA so I am not allowed to tell you any­thing else about it but, seri­ously, Rock Band is awe­some. Now, it’s time for me to set­tle in and wait for the game to actu­ally be released.

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