Man-Blogging

I met my friend Pundista at lunch today. I hadn’t seen her in awhile as she was off helping the Cubans at the World Baseball Classic. She’s a very benevolent person and likes her cigars. As she was the original inspiration for my blog and she hasn’t blogged since the 15,330 anniversary of my birth, I asked her why she hadn’t been writing lately.

Woman Blogging

She said “I haven’t been blogging because it makes me anti-social. I spend all my weekends doing research”

Man Blogging

Research?

First there was the whole ear-wax thing, and now this. I’m beginning to understand the differences between men and women may be insurmountable.

What follows in an account of a Man-Bloggers' method of research on some subject, say, ants:

1. Open bottle of wine.
2. Pour first glass of wine.
3. Drink wine.
4. Type “ants” into Google toolbar.
5. Verify data: type “ants” into Yahoo search box.
6. Pour more wine.
7. Hit the "Publish" button.
   

Principal of Limited Sloppiness

There is much anecdotal evidence that if woman ruled the earth, things would be much better off. After all, if we had researched WMD, there almost certainly would not be another war in Iraq. But just think of all the wonderful discoveries made without research:

1. Alexander Flemings discovery of penicillin. No self respecting woman would have ever let a cheese sandwich become moldy, nor would she have tested it for medicinal properties. She would have researched it.

2. Discovery of the New World. Columbus was looking for fricken Indonesia. You honestly think if he would have sailed in the wrong direction if he had been a woman and had done his research?

3. In 1879, Louis Pasteur inoculated some chickens with cholera bacteria. He was trying to kill some chickens. Chance, not research, had led him to discover the principle of vaccination for disease prevention.

4. In 1895, Wilhelm Roentgen was experimenting with electrical discharges. There was a screen coated with a barium compound lying to one side, and Roentgen noticed that it would fluoresce when an electrical discharge would occur in the tube he was watching. On reaching for the screen, Roentgen got his hand between the discharge tube and the screen and saw the bones of his own hand through the shadow of his skin. In 1901, Roentgen received the Nobel prize for his accidental discovery of X-rays.

So in the best “Principal of Limited Sloppiness” tradition of Man-Blogging, don’t think, just blog.

Starbucks

Even to this day, every time I go into a Starbucks to order my “coffee”, I am amazed by the language the other people speak. In my morning haze, sitting behind my sunglasses, I secretly study the people ordering, “two squirts de-caf tall no-foam chai”. I still can’t figure out what the fuck a “chai” is…

But now one of my friends has cleared up the language barrier for me. It’s an API! I remember once long ago when my sister was studying law and I was busy being a tech consultant. We swapped books for awhile and she began to read from my programming language book. Of course it was unintelligible but it sounded just like those overly-complicated freaks at Starbucks!

An excerpt from his post:

“The best platform companies are those that don't look like platform companies because most people are users of their solutions. In Starbucks' case, their solutions are espresso, cappucino, and the other things on their menu. But platform companies have interfaces that allows others to build their own products on top of the platform. Go to Starbucks enough and you realize that you can order your cappucino wet or dry, with three different cow's milks or soy, with more or less shots of espresso, and on and on. The solutions get people in the door, but the platforms empower the users to build what it is they really want given the same set of tools. In turn, the customers become tied to the platform because it is where their solution works best.

I've been involved with platform companies who didn't know they needed solutions to sign up customers, and solutions companies who didn't understand how important a platform could be. None were as successful as they should have been because they never undertstood the other half of their business. Platform leverage works like this: Build targeted solutions that leverage the platform, gain enough customer traction to prove that great solutions can be built on the platform, make it easy for others to develop on the platform, watch your customers' happiness grow.

Next time I have to explain to someone what is important about a platform strategy, I'm taking them to Starbucks.”

You look like you got hit by a Mack Truck!

I always remember this school-yard taunt from mean kids. The implication was “you’re so ugly you look like you got hit by a Mack Truck”. I never thought much of the taunt until the day I actually got hit by a Mack Truck.

Looking back, it was incredibly lucky that I did not die in that accident, seeing as though I was driving a 1972 Toyota Corolla at the time. But I didn’t and the story now has humorous aspects that are worth telling.

I was living in Kansas City, going to college and I was about 18 years old. A childhood friend from the town I grew up in was also living in KC at the time. Shortly before the incident, my Kermit-The-Frog-Green, 1972 Ford Pinto (the kind that exploded when you got hit) had started on fire and was out of service. This is how I ended up in the old Toyota, a borrowed car from one of my room-mates.

The childhood friend, Jerry, came to me and asked for a ride the 40 miles to downtown KC. He had apparently gotten drunk and lost his car the previous weekend and the car had been towed to an impound lot downtown. As I worked 6pm to 2am in the datacenter of a bank in downtown KC, I was the likely candidate for the ride to retrieve his car.

We drove down to where we thought the impound lot was and in the process got very lost. We pulled off on what we thought was the freeway exit near the impound lot and proceed a bit, soon determining this was not the correct way. I looked in my mirror seeing nothing and proceed to do a U-turn. The last thing I saw was a Mack Truck similar to the one in the picture above.

We were both very lucky. The fully-loaded truck hit us broadside at an estimated 60MPH. The truck tore the engine completely off the car as the rest of the Corolla did a 720 degree spin. The force was so great, I broke my right collarbone.

The ambulance came and they offered me a ride to the hospital. I was very poor at the time and obviously in shock and said no. What a mistake that was. The police didn’t explain to me that the alternative was to be arrested for reckless driving and a spell in a holding cell.

Next thing I knew, I was in jail with a broken should with a bunch of prostitutes and other miscreants. I had one phone call and I called work to tell them I wouldn’t be in that day…

Elevators Tactics

1. If it is just you and a stranger, stand right next to them instead of the opposite wall.
2. Pretend to sneeze in your hand and then touch all the buttons
3. Blow your nose and offer to show the contents of your Kleenex to other passengers.
4. Make inappropriate comments like, “Yeah, I couldn’t afford to put my cat to sleep so I strangled it.” or “Yeah, I told her, I don’t care if you are a nun, I’ll knock your ass out cold.”
5. Crack open your briefcase or purse, and while peering inside ask: "Got enough air in there?"
6. Offer name tags to everyone getting on the elevator.
7. Stand silent and motionless in the corner, facing the wall,without getting off.
8. When arriving at your floor, grunt and strain to yank the doors open, then act embarrassed when they open by themselves.
9. Greet everyone getting on the elevator with a warm handshake and ask them to call you Admiral.
10. Do Tai Chi exercises.
11. Stare, grinning, at another passenger for a while, and then announce: "I've got new socks on!"
12. When at least 8 people have boarded, moan from the back: "Oh, not now, damn motion sickness!"
13. Give religious tracts to each passenger.
14. Show other passengers a wound and ask if it looks infected.
15. Walk on with a cooler that says "human head" on the side.
16. Stare at another passenger for a while, then announce "You're one of THEM!" and move to the far corner of the elevator.
17. Ask each passenger getting on if you can push the button for them.
18. When the elevator is silent, look around and ask "is that your phone?"
19. Say "Ding!" at each floor.
20. Lean against the button panel.
21. Draw a little square on the floor with chalk and announce to the other passengers that this is your "personal space."
22. Bring a chair along.
23. Blow spit bubbles."
24. Make explosion noises when anyone presses a button.
25. Breathe loudly.
    
26. Stare at your thumb and say "I think it's getting larger."
27. If anyone brushes against you, recoil and holler "Bad touch!"

Ole and Lena

During my first blog, I went on about how enjoyable and cathartic the whole process was and that I could finally share things like that fine publishing effort, the Star Gazette, with a wider audience.

The Star Gazette is the excellent rag where you can find things like Ole and Lena jokes. Very Minnesota. During that first blog I promise to come back with more of those old classics, the Ole and Lena jokes. I've also included their friends, Oivo, Toivo and Eino.

There was a Midwestern phone company that was going to hire one team of telephone pole installers, and the boss had to choose between a team of two Norwegian guys and a team of two Irish guys. So the boss met with both teams and said: "Here's what we'll do. Each team will be installing poles out on the new road for a day. The team that installs the most phone poles gets the job."Both teams headed right out. At end of the shift, Pat and Mike, the Irish guys, came back and the boss asked them how many they had installed.

They said that it was tough going, but they'd put in twelve. Forty-five minutes later, Ole and Sven,the Norwegian guys came back in and they were totally exhausted. The boss asked, "Well, how many poles did you guys install?"

Ole, the team leader wiped his brow and sighed, "Sven and me, we got three in."

The boss gasped, "Three? Those two Irish guys put in twelve!"" Yeah," said Ole, "but you should see how much they left stickin'out of the ground!"

-----------

Oivo and Toivo

Toivo and Eino decide to go ice fishing one day. Anyway, after a long day at the lake they come home exhausted and Irma (that's Toivo's wife) says "well, did you get any fish, eh?"

Toivo says "Heck no. It took us darn near all afternoon just to cut a hole big enough to put the boat in!"

-----------

Dialogue at a ticket window at a Minnesota railroad station:

Immigrant: "Too to Doloot" (Duluth)

Ticket officer: "Toodledoo to you, too!"

-----------

Toivo and Eino were building a sauna. Eino was on one side and Toivo was working on the other side. Toivo came around to Eino's side to check up on him.

Eino picked up a nail, looked at it, and then nailed it into the sauna. Then he picked up another nail, looked at it, and threw it away. Then Eino picked up another nail, looked at it, threw it away.

TOIVO: "Eino, why did you trow dos nails avay?"
EINO: "Dos nails were going the other way."
TOIVO: "You fool! dos nails are for the other side of the sauna."

-----------

Toivo and Eino were going hunting. Toivo says, "Eino, lets split up, if you get lost fire three shots into the air."

So Eino gets lost. He fires three shots in the air and says,"Gee I hope Toivo sees my arrows."

-----------

Toivo and Eino go hunting, and Eino shoots Toivo. He takes him into the hospital. Then after surgery, the doctor comes out mad and says," Eino, we could have saved him if you wouldnt have field dressed him first!"

Back to my roots....

Road Kill

I’ve eaten road kill before.

In fact, the law even supported me in my road-kill endeavor. A 1997 Minnesota law states:

“…allow a driver claiming a salvageable animal to keep it at no charge. The carcass can be released to another person at the scene, or by a conservation officer for distribution to various public benefit organizations.

Unsalvageable deer, and deer for which there is no immediate salvageable demand, must be referred to the road authority that has immediate responsibility.

Salvageable big game other than vehicle-killed deer are sold for the highest price obtainable. Their sale is reported on confiscation and sale reports. Minimum prices for these animals are: moose ($50) and bear ($10), plus $1 per claw if sold with the animal.”

No charge if the bear claw is not sold with the animal?

Unlike the guys in the stories below, I’ve never been aggressive about my road-kill. Once, many years ago, while driving around, a perfectly good pheasant decided to fly into my truck. I stopped, threw his carcass in the back and later cooked and ate him.

But it is somewhat heartening that human nature, whether in Estonia or in Michigan, is basically the same:

Estonian Driver Accidentally Runs Over 10 Wild Boars in One Day

Uuno Siitoja, the head of a hunting estate rode his BMW-520 in the south of the country making 90 kilometers per hour when the first accident happened, as reported in the Estonian newspaper SL Ohtuleht.

After turning on the road, Siitoja noticed a herd of wild boars on his way. He attempted to brake but still his car hit the boars. Six of the animals remained on the road, alive but gravely injured.

Siitoja asked a driver of an oncoming car to wait for him at the scene and drove home for a gun to put the animals to the death. When he was returning to the place, he saw another herd on the road. Again, he had no other chance than to hit them. Four boars died instantly upon the collision.

Siitoja was left unharmed and his car was damaged only slightly.

Ten boars and only slight damage to his BMW?

And this Michigan police report:

“CO Terry Short completed an investigation and is seeking a warrant for a man who attempted to run over a flock of turkeys with his car. The subject, after swerving twice to hit the flock, stopped his vehicle and ran after the birds. During his confession, the individual told CO Short that he was not aware the birds could fly and thought he could catch one of them.”

Bill Murray on the Uke

We just returned from a trip to Hawaii. As it goes, Hawaii has its good points and bad. It sometimes has that Walmart feel. A Walmart set in some of the most beautiful scenery. As I was sans-cell phone, email and blogging during my recent holiday, and because my hand-writing skills seem to be deteriorating with age, my observations were nearly monosyllabic:

• The waves are relentless.
• A sea turtle drifting past.
• The yellow and blue fish hiding in the corral.
• The black lava.
• The dead, white corral rolling in the surf.
• A whale breaching in the blue.
• The grass colonizing the fresh lava.
• Lizards and feral cats everywhere.

And Bill Murray standing next to me in the open-air, airport security line at Kona airport, strumming a Ukulele.

Blunt Force

The other day I was reading Freakonomics, an economics book by Steven Levitt. In it, there is a chapter on parenting.

I was reading a specific passage that detailed a “cultural myth” that parents contribute a great deal to their child’s personality. The argument was that “the top down influence of parents is overwhelmed by the grassroots effect of peer pressure, the blunt force applied each day by friends and school mates”.

At the precise moment I was reading this passage, my four year old daughter came to me and said “daddy, my friend Melanie says my skin is brown”.

Now throughout her short life, my wife and I have always been attentive and complimentary to my daughter, telling her she’s beautiful and smart. Never once have we mentioned the color of her skin or of anyone else’s skin for that matter. It didn't phase her, nor does it matter. But even though Melanie was also Japanese, the comment made me think of racism and the uncontrollable aspects of life.

“The blunt force applied each day by friends”.

Old School

This is the eighth-grade final exam from 1895 from Salina, Kansas. Students taking this test were allowed to take the test in the 7th grade, and if they did not pass the test at that time, they were allowed to re-take it again in the 8th grade.

How well would you do?

Grammar (Time, one hour)
1. Give nine rules for the use of Capital Letters.
2. Name the Parts of Speech and define those that have no modifications.
3. Define Verse, Stanza and Paragraph.
4. What are the Principal Parts of a verb? Give Principal Parts of do, lie, lay and run.
5. Define Case, Illustrate each Case.
6. What is Punctuation? Give rules for principal marks of Punctuation.
7-10. Write a composition of about 150 words and show therein that you understand the practical use of the rules of grammar.

Arithmetic (Time, 1.25 hours)
1. Name and define the Fundamental Rules of Arithmetic.
2. A wagon box is 2 ft. deep, 10 feet long, and 3 ft. wide. How many bushels of wheat will it hold?
3. If a load of wheat weighs 3942 lbs., what is it worth at 50cts. per bu, deducting 1050 lbs. for tare?
4. District No. 33 has a valuation of $35,000. What is the necessary levy to carry on a school seven months at $50 per month, and have $104 for incidentals?
5. Find cost of 6720 lbs. coal at $6.00 per ton.
6. Find the interest of $512.60 for 8 months and 18 days at 7 percent.
7. What is the cost of 40 boards 12 inches wide and 16 ft. long at $.20 per inch?
8. Find bank discount on $300 for 90 days (no grace) at 10 percent.
9. What is the cost of a square farm at $15 per acre, the distance around which is 640 rods?
10.Write a Bank Check, a Promissory Note, and a Receipt.

U.S. History (Time, 45 minutes)
1. Give the epochs into which U.S. History is divided.
2. Give an account of the discovery of America by Columbus.
3. Relate the causes and results of the Revolutionary War.
4. Show the territorial growth of the United States.
5. Tell what you can of the history of Kansas.
6. Describe three of the most prominent battles of the Rebellion.
7. Who were the following: Morse, Whitney, Fulton, Bell, Lincoln, Penn, and Howe?
8. Name events connected with the following dates: 1607, 1620, 1800, 1849, and 1865?

Orthography (Time, one hour)
1. What is meant by the following: Alphabet, phonetic orthography, etymology, syllabication?
2. What are elementary sounds? How classified?
3. What are the following, and give examples of each: Trigraph, subvocals, diphthong, cognate letters, linguals?
4. Give four substitutes for caret 'u'.
5. Give two rules for spelling words with final 'e'. Name two exceptions under each rule.
6. Give two uses of silent letters in spelling. Illustrate each.
7. Define the following prefixes and use in connection with a word: Bi, dis, mis, pre, semi, post, non, inter, mono, super.
8. Mark diacritically and divide into syllables the following, and name the sign that indicates the sound: Card, ball, mercy, sir, odd, cell, rise, blood, fare, last.
9. Use the following correctly in sentences, Cite, site, sight, fane, fain, feign, vane, vain, vein, raze, raise, rays.
10.Write 10 words frequently mispronounced and indicate pronunciation by use of diacritical marks and by syllabication.

Geography (Time, one hour)
1. What is climate? Upon what does climate depend?
2. How do you account for the extremes of climate in Kansas?
3. Of what use are rivers? Of what use is the ocean?
4. Describe the mountains of N.A.
5. Name and describe the following: Monrovia, Odessa, Denver, Manitoba, Hecla, Yukon, St. Helena, Juan Fermandez, Aspinwall and Orinoco.
6. Name and locate the principal trade centers of the U.S.
7. Name all the republics of Europe and give capital of each.
8. Why is the Atlantic Coast colder than the Pacific in the same latitude?
9. Describe the process by which the water of the ocean returns to the sources of rivers.
10. Describe the movements of the earth. Give inclination of the earth.

Credits

Never Feed A Banana To A Bear

• Camels are born deaf. They do not gain a sense of hearing until they are six months old.
• Tigers only defecate at night.
• Since 1989, pigeons in Vatican City have outnumbered human residents by 210 to one.
• 90 percent of American brown bears are allergic to bananas.
• Biologically, zebras are black with white stripes, not white with black stripes.
• One species of slime mold occurs in more than five hundred distinct sexes.
• Farmed salmon requires 3 to 5 pounds of feed (made of ground fish) grow 1 pound of fish.
• After the chinchilla, the hamster and the bonobo, humans are the fourth most sexualized mammal.
• Over forty-five years of space exploration, no fewer than six dogs, eleven cats, four thousand mice and an aquarium-full of crickets are believed to have been stranded in low Earth orbit.
• Each year, the Earth's 1.3 million sperm whales eat a mass of squid equivalent in weight to all of humanity — roughly a dozen people a day per whale.
• The chapter on game in 1950's and 60's editions of the best-selling "Joy of Cooking" included recipes for muskrat, opossum and polecat ("carefully remove scent-glands before dressing").
• The world's largest organism is arguably a termite super-colony, spanning 4300 square miles across southern Kenya.
• During 2005, twenty animals were stolen from US zoos: the smallest was a lizard and the largest was a hippo.
• More people each year are killed by hippos than are killed by lions, coatis, tigers, sharks, crocodiles, impalas, leopards and antelopes combined.
• Red outerwear is banned from coastal Antarctic research stations -- it inflames and enrages the penguin population.
• Krill is expected to account for 12 percent of the world's protein supply by 2012.

Credits

Joe D

One year ago this June, one of my best friends and colleagues died a tragic death. Today would have been his 43^rd birthday. During the memorial services at work last year, I spoke of him:

"Joe D was our colleague, he was our coach, he was an intermediary, a confidant and a leader, but most of all, he was our friend. Joe D show us all how to be better. Better employees, better managers, better people. I learned from Joe D and I’ll miss him, but the lessons he taught me will stay with me forever. His strength and confidence, his uncanny ability to wake up at 4am, work out, and still be in the office by 6am. His laughter even during the most stressful of times. His guidance during uncertainty. His smile and friendly hello whenever he saw you. I’ll especially miss his way of answering the phone…Joe D."

He was a good man and his memory will serve us all forever. I miss him.

3.1415926

Today is pi day. March 14 at 1:59:26 the date and time represent the first eight digits of pi. 3.1415926. And as long as we're doing useless information today, I've provided some interesting, albeit useless demographic information:

-Israel has a higher infant death rate than the Gaza Strip.

-Botswana. It is estimated that one-third of the population between the ages of 15 and 49 (out of a total population of 1.5 million) are infected with the virus that causes AIDS, the highest rate in the world. One out of every eight infants are infected at birth

Note: Life expectancy in Botswana in 2006 is the same for that of males born in the years 1276-1300. If you were born 700 years ago, your life expectancy would be 31.3 years of age. Today in Botswana it is 33.9 years of age.

-Japan has the highest life expectancy and the lowest infant death rate in the world

-North Korea has both double the infant deaths and fertility rates of their southern neighbors.

-India and Botswana have almost identical infant mortality rates

-The Palestinians are an exceptionally fertile creed.

The Data:

US 2005

• Births per 1,000 population 14
• Deaths per 1,000 population 8
• Rate of natural increase (percent) 0.6
• Annual rate of growth (percent) 0.9
• Life expectancy at birth (years) 77.7
• Infant deaths per 1,000 live births 6
• Total fertility rate (per woman) 2.1

UK

• Births per 1,000 population 11
• Deaths per 1,000 population 10
• Rate of natural increase (percent) 0.1
• Annual rate of growth (percent) 0.3
• Life expectancy at birth (years) 78.4
• Infant deaths per 1,000 live births 5
• Total fertility rate (per woman) 1.7

China

• Births per 1,000 population 13
• Deaths per 1,000 population 7
• Rate of natural increase (percent) 0.6
• Annual rate of growth (percent) 0.6
• Life expectancy at birth (years) 72.3
• Infant deaths per 1,000 live births 24
• Total fertility rate (per woman) 1.7

Japan

• Births per 1,000 population 9
• Deaths per 1,000 population 9
• Rate of natural increase (percent) 0.1
• Annual rate of growth (percent) 0.1
• Life expectancy at birth (years) 81.2
• Infant deaths per 1,000 live births 3
• Total fertility rate (per woman) 1.4

Gaza Strip

• Births per 1,000 population 40
• Deaths per 1,000 population 4
• Rate of natural increase (percent) 3.6
• Annual rate of growth (percent) 3.8
• Life expectancy at birth (years) 71.8
• Infant deaths per 1,000 live births 23
• Total fertility rate (per woman) 5.9

Israel

• Births per 1,000 population 21
• Deaths per 1,000 population 6
• Rate of natural increase (percent) 1.4
• Annual rate of growth (percent) 1.4
• Life expectancy at birth (years) 69.6
• Infant deaths per 1,000 live births 36
• Total fertility rate (per woman) 2.4

North Korea

• Births per 1,000 population 16
• Deaths per 1,000 population 7
• Rate of natural increase (percent) 0.9
• Annual rate of growth (percent) 0.9
• Life expectancy at birth (years) 71.4
• Infant deaths per 1,000 live births 24
• Total fertility rate (per woman) 2.2

South Korea

• Births per 1,000 population 10
• Deaths per 1,000 population 6
• Rate of natural increase (percent) 0.4
• Annual rate of growth (percent) 0.4
• Life expectancy at birth (years) 76.8
• Infant deaths per 1,000 live births 6
• Total fertility rate (per woman) 1.3

Botswana

• Births per 1,000 population 23
• Deaths per 1,000 population 29
• Rate of natural increase (percent) - 0.6
• Annual rate of growth (percent) 0.0
• Life expectancy at birth (years) 33.9
• Infant deaths per 1,000 live births 55
• Total fertility rate (per woman) 2.8

India

• Births per 1,000 population 22
• Deaths per 1,000 population 8
• Rate of natural increase (percent) 1.4
• Annual rate of growth (percent) 1.4
• Life expectancy at birth (years) 64.4
• Infant deaths per 1,000 live births 56
• Total fertility rate (per woman) 2.8

Indonesia

• Births per 1,000 population 21
• Deaths per 1,000 population 6
• Rate of natural increase (percent) 1.4
• Annual rate of growth (percent) 1.4
• Life expectancy at birth (years) 69.6
• Infant deaths per 1,000 live births 36
• Total fertility rate (per woman) 2.4

Elvis and I

The other day in the NY Times Magazine, I was reading about the government’s attempts to map social relationships by modeling the contacts, transactions and links between groups and individuals. They were looking for hidden connections and patterns in large volumes of data such as calls and email traffic. Analysts working for the Army project called Able Danger named the effort “the Kevin Bacon game”.

I’ve always been fascinated by the whole “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon” phenomenon but I never understood why or how Kevin Bacon came to be the center of the universe. He’s been in a lot of great movies but he’s certainly not the actor of the millennia.

A sampling of his filmography:

• Mystic River
• Hollow Man
• Sleepers
• Apollo 13
• The River Wild
• A Few Good Men
• JFK
• Flatliners
• Planes, Trains and Automobiles
• Footloose
• Friday the 13^th

He has not only a concept named after him, he has a number!

Bacon Numbers:

The concept is simple, but finding the smallest number of links can be difficult. The way you link an actor with Bacon is like so:

• Pick any film actor.

• Link the actor you've chosen to Kevin Bacon via the movies they've shared with other actors until you end up with Kevin Bacon himself.

Here is an example, using Elvis:

• Elvis Presley was in Change of Habit with Edward Asner

• Edward Asner was in JFK with Kevin Bacon

Therefore Elvis Presley has a Bacon Number of 2.

But it turns out, he’s not really considered as the center of the universe. The concept and number is only a pun on his name. Six Degree’s of Separation (both the play and the movie) and Six Degree’s of Kevin Bacon. A pun. But nonetheless, he has a number and that’s impressive.

And I, like Elvis, am only two degrees from Kevin Bacon. My amazing Bacon Number ranking owes to one event sometime in the early 1990’s when I purchased a piece of art from a studio in NYC. The piece was created by Kevin Bacon’s brother-in-law.

You Cannot Hug A Baobab

I may be considered a tree-hugger. I’ve climbed them, chopped them, rode them (in the water) and I’ve even hugged them. Once, after falling asleep whilst using a pine tree as a headrest next to a roaring fire, I even became attached to one. The fire had heated the sap in the tree to the degree that it ran down into my hair and when I awoke, after the fire was out and the sap had cooled, I became one with the tree.

My fascination with trees certainly carries to the Baobab tree. These trees are unlike any tree I’ve ever seen. Very prehistoric. Pictured is the World’s Champion Baobab Tree. I even like the fact that it’s difficult to pronounce the name. It’s not like “oak”, “birch”, “palm” or “pine”. It’s Baobab; B-a-o-b-a-b.

The Baobab is found in the arid savannas of Africa and India, and known as "The Tree of Life" for its vitality and longevity. This gigantic tree can grow up to 80 feet tall, and up to 40 feet in diameter, with compact, irregular crown, and can live for several thousand years. In spite of the enormous girth of the trees, they are not particularly tall, and thus have a bottlelike appearance. The baobab is leafless for nine months of the year. In the wet months, water is stored in its thick, corky, fire-resistant trunk for the nine dry months ahead.

Baobab legend:

• An Arabian legend says that "the devil plucked up the baobab, thrust its branches into the earth and left its roots in the air."
• Another legend states: "The baobab was among the first trees to appear on the land. Next came the slender, graceful palm tree. When the baobab saw the palm tree, it cried out that it wanted to be taller. Then the beautiful flame tree appeared with its red flower and the baobab was envious for flower blossoms. When the baobab saw the magnificent fig tree, it prayed for fruit as well. The gods became angry with the tree, and pulled it up by its roots, then replanted it upside down to keep it quiet.
• In Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's story The Little Prince , the Little Prince was worried that baobabs (described as "trees as big as castles") would grow on his asteroid and take up all the space.

The baobab's bark, leaves, fruit, and trunk are all used:

• the bark of the baobab is used for cloth and rope
• the leaves for condiments and medicines
• the gourd-like fruit, called "monkey bread", is eaten
• the leaves are also common as a leaf vegetable throughout Africa.
• the leaves are used to make kuka soup in Nigeria.
• the dry pulp of the fruit, after separation from the seeds and fibers, is eaten directly or mixed into porridge or milk
• the seeds are most used as a thickener for soups, but may also be fermented into a seasoning, roasted for direct consumption, or pounded to extract vegetable oil.
• the tree also provides a source of fiber, dye, and fuel
• sometimes people live inside of the huge trunks
• bush-babies live in the crown

What a tree! It even comes with Bush Babies!

B-a-o-b-a-b.

Deer Hunting

In the town I grew up in we used to get two days off of school at the opening of deer hunting season. Upon reflection, this tells me this transcends sport hunting and enters into the territory of sustenance hunting.

This is not a bad thing. I’m a fan of PETA, if only because about 20 years ago, I slept with a PETA member at a conference in Boston. But that’s about the extent of my PETA beliefs.

Deer, along with pigeons, and maybe flying squirrels are beyond my compassion. There are more whitetails today in the United States than when Columbus discovered America.

The Insurance Information Institute in Manhattan says that there are 750,000 animal-vehicle collisions a year in the United States, which cause $1.2 billion in damage. More than 100 people die each year in those accidents, according to the National Safety Council, and some 10,000 are injured. A majority of the accidents involve deer.

U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in Atlanta, announced that animals are to blame for 26,000 auto injuries each year on the nation's roads. About 200 people are killed annually in accidents involving either hitting an animal or swerving to avoid one.

• Minnesota averages 19,000 car/deer accidents per year, causing 450 injuries and two deaths.
• Wisconsin had 45,278 deer collisions last year.
• Michigan had 66,993.
• In Ohio, they had 30,306 deer-vehicle accidents. Five fatalities and 898 injuries.
• New York State, 8,570 deer were reported hit by cars last year.

With all these facts, I am proud to report that 33.59% of all people where I grew up killed a dear last year. In 2000, Carlton County had 33,639 people and Pine country brought home a whopping 28,116 as a metropolitan area, a grand total population of 61,755. The total deer harvest was 20,747 in the DNR's Cloquet area, which includes Pine and Carlton counties.

As this is a total population figure, including women and children, and all men don’t hunt, this must mean that a few strong individuals, and maybe a few kids (see picture above), must be machine-gunning the deer to keep the population in control.

God love the Queen, the NRA and Dick Cheney (as long as I’m not deer hunting with him).

My New Favorite Newspaper

There is competition for my favorite newspaper. The top position had been held by the Star Gazette but now I have come across this gem, the Mosnews.com.

A few samplings from a recent version of My New Favorite Newspaper:

Pack of Cigarettes Explode Tearing Man's Hand Apart
A pack of cigarettes exploded in a man's hands in the Russian city of Cheboksary.

The man seized the pack at a bar, went out in the street and opened it. After that, a major explosion tore his hand and another person's finger apart, Komsomolskaya Pravda reported.

Russian Thieves Break Into Soviet-Era Missile Silo to Find it Filled With Money Bills
A team of thieves that broke into an abandoned missile silo not far from the Russian city of Kostroma in search of nonferrous metals was shocked to find the shaft packed with Soviet money bills, Regnum news agency reported on Tuesday.

The incident would have remained secret, had the wind not blown hundreds of banknotes all over the countryside.

Four men from Nizhny Novgorod found the silo that had had missiles dismantled and put on maintenance decades ago in accordance with the Soviet disarmament program. They targeted the metals inside and said they had had no idea about the money hidden in the shaft.

The men opened up the silo, neglecting the possible danger of ripping open a high radiation and toxins level enclosure.

Ukrainian Killed in Moscow Garbage Truck
A Ukrainian worker was killed in Moscow after accidentally getting into a garbage truck that crushed the hapless fellow to death, Russia's RIA-Novosti news agency reported Monday.

The accident took place at one of the city's garbage dumps. The worker fell into the collector of the Kamaz garbage truck when the press was working. He died instantly.

Mechanics Remove Grenade From Gas Tank After Russian Driver Complains of Car Malfunctions
A man from Moscow was driving his Audi for the whole day on Tuesday before mechanics removed a grenade installed in his car near the gasoline tank, Interfax news agency reported.

In the evening he drove to a service center and complained that his car was rattling. Workers began examining the vehicle and to their surprise found a grenade on a tripwire, which was broken and twisted around a wheel. Fortunately, this "failure" prevented the blast.

Russian Customer Finds Corpse in Secondhand Car From Japan
A customer from Moscow had his secondhand SUV from Japan delivered to his doors with a rather unpleasant surprise — a partially decomposed dead body of a man inside, the Moskovsky Komsomolets daily reported on Sunday.

Russian Inventor Patents Invisibility Cloak

A professor from the department of quantum and optical electronics of the Ulyanovsk State University in western Russia has patented a method of making things invisible, Interfax news agency reported.

The so-called invisibility cloak, created by Oleg Gadomsky, is called "The method of conversion of optical radiation" in the patent.

Gadomsky had been long experimenting on nanoparticles of gold. He now claims to have invented a sub-micron stratum of microscopical colloid golden particles that makes an object placed behind it invisible to an observer.

"Only static objects can be made invisible for the time being, as during motion the radiation frequency changes. But soon it will be possible to create a cap of darkness and a magic cloak like Harry Potter's" the scientist believes.