First, They Came for the Snacks...

24-Hour Dorman explores a libertarian's nightmare dystopia of banned cupcakes.

Demon Takes Silver: Thanks God it Isn't a Werewolf

ForeWord Magazine has announced its Book of the Year Award winners.

My favorite book of 2007, Demon: A Memoir has taken the silver medal in its category.

Incidentally, the full list of winners, medalists, and finalists provides a pirate's chest of the treasure from independent presses.

Congratulations, Tosca Lee, and all the authors recognized by ForeWard Magazine.

I think this means I have taste. Chili dogs and rotgut are on the house...er, cave!

Write Justified

Writers spend a lot of time justifying their own existence, mostly to themselves.* A lot of work goes into defending art, and the art of writing, in particular, demonstrating the practical benefits of writing, and the importance that reading holds for the culture.

Many high-faluting** words later, and the writer is in no better standing.

As it should be.

Because writing isn't important. It isn't a signficant contribution to society, regardless of the 15-second soundbite paid to its importance once a year during the Academy Award ceremony.

And that's how I like it. Whether we are firing off an opinionated missive, or finalizing a draft of the Great Armenian Novel,*** I think the most important goal an author can have is to be the least in the Kingdom.

May your writing bear fruit that nourishes. But be happy to finish in last place. That's where the best work happens.

*Mostly because no one else is listening to them.

**Yes, how random of me to rescue the "-in'" suffix from colloquial purgatory while living in place the bastardization of the "highflight" root from which "highfalutin'" stems. I'm a messy rescuer.

***Because, really there hasn't been a huge number of great works out of Armenia since Tmpgaperti Aroume, and everybody and his dog has written the Great American one.

Korea: Unified and Free

I've been praying for a unified Korea. When I do this, I sort of assume that God knows that, included in that request is an obvious assumption that I also therefore pray for a free North Korea.

But as I consider this, liberty and unification are not truly ends. We're not talking about joining the Dakotas, after all. There is a greater disparity today between North Korea and South Korea than existed between East and West Germany in 1989. The dictatorship in place is relatively independent as opposed to the Soviet puppetry in place at the end of East Germany.

So, when I pray for the miracle of freedom, food, infrastructure and eventual unification with the South, I recognize a need to extend that prayer for the decades following severe "post-totalitarian stress disorder" as well as for the people of free Korea, who will obviously welcome reuniting with their countrymen, but will also have a new burden to bear.

I hope this doesn't sound political. Because it isn't.

Foul Balls in Center Field

To celebrate the boys of summer, I present the catchiest tune from the most clueless baseball player/lyricist in the history of the game.



Confusion and defeat has never been more inspirational. Thanks, Matt & Kim!

[Lightspeed - Matt & Kim]

Science: No Place for Consensus

"Scientific" consensus sucks. It is science-defeating. It is anti-science.

Isaac Newton's "laws" of physics were unbreakable until that ding-dong Al Einstein guessed that Mercury should do a galactic jitterbug in the sky due to gravity's impact on light wave-particles.* Heck, we still cling to those laws, because, for everyday living, they do the job pretty well.

The problem is that scientific consensus usually does the job of keeping things running smoothly, until it doesn't. People forget that Galileo's problem wasn't that he was a man of science taking on the Catholic Church: he was a man of science taking on scientific consensus. The Catholics just happened to be in bed with the reigning consensus of the day.

So here's my word of advice: when they say "consensus," you say "Galileo."

*Kids: please don't use me for homework. Suck it up and borrow the Cliff's Notes guide to Quantum Physics from the deadbeat in the back of class. Oh wait. That's me. Proceed.

Scott Jorgenson Reigns Quietly Over Lap-Band Ad

I just caught one of my all-time favorite actors in the history of the galaxy last night at 2* in the morning on a commercial for Lap-Band adjustable gastric banding system.

In the brief, but moving, drama, Scott Jorgenson complains about his knees with Shakespearean acumen. It takes up about 2 or 3 seconds of screen time, but it haunts me still. Unfortunately, the good people at Lap-Band have only released their commercial at their proprietary site, so I'm unable to embed the performance here.

So go here and click on "View Our Commercial" to enjoy Mr. Jorgenson's riveting performance. Or to learn more about putting a remote-control tourniquet on your innards. Frankly, it sounds like a fun past time, but I don't think I'd like the side effect of wanting to eat less.

Scott Jorgenson: every man's everyman. Next up: Fear of Girls 3.

*This is my dilemma: I can sleep a full 3 hours every night, or I can strain arcane knowledge from the electronic underworld of the mid-night hours. How would you split the baby?

Weezer: Pork and Beans

There's nothing more delicious than pork and beans and the Internet.



Weezer is so lame. Greatly lame, that is.

Ancient Observation of the Gryffin

Adrienne Mayor is an independent scholor who studies ancient folklore and attempts to plot it against known archaeology and geology. This method led her to a conclusion that the ancient mythological beasts, at least some of them, have their origins in the scientific observation of the day, not sheer flights of fancy. In other words, the ancients were astute fossil hunters and reconstructive archaeologists and anthropologists.

A part of me wonders that if Mayor's basic assumptions are correct, is it not possible that the ancients were also astute naturalists, as well? Is it at all within the realm of scientific possibility, that the bones where fossils now lie were once, more recently than we might normally make conjencture, covered in flesh?

Greek Fire and the Silent Death of the A-bomb.

Greek Fire was the most formidable naval and siege weapon in Byzantine, and, likely, pre-modern, history.

It could burn on (or even under) water, lighting whole ships afire, and its composition was a closely guarded secret (indeed, even today, there is debate over its composition.)

How does such a weapon get lost to history? It is incredible that such a military advantage would not again appear until the Great War with the modern flamethrower.

The atomic bomb and its more impressive progeny may well be headed for the same fate. Now, I know, I know, there are plenty of parties interested in proliferating nuclear weapons from now until Judgment Day (perhaps even to hasten it) but culturally, we've moved on: the days of the Cuban Missle Crisis, the Midnight Clock...even Godzilla movies are now a part of an almost quaint history.

Perhaps a weapon that is so devastating that it has only been used once (well, twice) since its invention creates its obsolescence through its very power. Or perhaps it will lay latent for decades or centuries, awaiting its revival.

Just like Greek Fire.

Pearl Bailey and Dinah Shore Sing About Serial Murder

Bailey and Shore tear into Mack the Knife:

One thing I can say about the evil we've brought into the world is that it gave Dinah and Pearl great subject matter to lampoon. God bless those great ladies.

The Strug Gambit and Glory

Because it is the weekend, and, when humans do something astounding, you never forget it:



One foot, man.

One foot.

Kerri Strug sacrificed her foot to secure gold for her team, costing her the only shot she would ever have at individual glory. Sacrifice isn't always a long, drawn-out deliberation. She had prepared her entire life for glory, and, at glory's cusp, instead chose sacrifice.

And gained glory.

Funny that.

Guild Season FINALE: Boss Fight

Guilders:

Man up.

And woman.

Up, that is.

Internet Killed the Video Star - With a Uke, a Harp and a Bass

The Wrong Trousers get it right.

Penrose-Carter Diagram of the Finite Observer Looks A Lot Like Einstein

Einstein didn't know the guy, but he loved his work.

Great little sidebar: A mother brought her son to the rabbi, and the rabbi said to the boy; “I will give you a guilder if you can tell me where God lives.” The boy thought for only a moment and then said, “And I will give you two guilders if you can tell me where he doesn’t live.”