Robots and Reggae part 2

I promised an update on my exciting Friday night. The robot contest at MIT turned out to be just an MIT class that was also a kind of microcosm of the DARPA Grand Challenge. Autonomous robots send shivers down my spine, whether they have to pick up golf balls and throw them in a football goal or traverse 150 miles of the Mojave Desert ALL BY THEMSELVES. The only thing missing was combat of some kind. The reggae that followed was actually live hip-hop at well-hidden nightclub in Cambridge (Massachusetts) called the Western Front. Can't recommend it enough. One of the rappers had a baseball cap that said "617", the Boston area code. If anyone knows where to get one, let me know. That is ueber-cool.

No Smoking Please

There has been lots of debate recently about smoking in Cuba, home of the cigar, Ireland, home of the pub, and San Francisco, US island concerned with health and environmentalism.

"Oh we can't believe he won a second term"

From Jib Jab, another funny funny funny clever clever clever musical cartoon. Watch puppets of W and his cronies sing about what they will do for the next four years.
http://movies.yahoo.com/movies/feature/jibjabinaugural.html

Panikmache

This is a German word for the particularly US tendency to create panic. I love the way it is a noun--so convenient, no such word in English? Also of this ilk is a phrase that literally means to tenderise meat by beating it, but when used means "to soften up a man"--for example to get him to marry you. The phrase is "Weichklopfen". One more cool word is "pilzfoermig" for mushroom-shaped.

Velocipede

New Scientist's Mick Hamer has written a wonderful story (it really is my favourite magazine) on how a volcano that erupted in the early 1800s caused a fit of blizzards and torrential rainfall all over the world that kept inventors and novellists alike housebound and triggered invention and innovation. While trapped in Lord Byron's home on Lake Geneva due to torrential rainfall, the 18-year-old Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein--it was her entry in a ghost story competition that was supposed to pass the time during the storm. Meanwhile In Baden, Germany, "the soaring price of oats" caused by the bad weather prompted Karl Drais to search for transport that did not involve horses, and he came up with the velocipede, the pre-cursor to the modern bicycle. Although the velocipede initially had no gears, and was more of a "Laufmaschine" or walking aid, it was the first time people dared to travel on two wheels instead of four. And while extremely fearful--"People didn't dare lift their deet off the ground for more than a split second"--people could believe that two-wheeled travel would work, because ice-skating had already become popular. According to New Scientist, Dutch women were already frequently seen "skating from village to village along frozen canals, balancing a milk churn on their heads while doing their knitting". Wow.

Democracy in Iraq

I am no expert on the situation in Iraq, but such an important day deserves a comment. It seems to be going better than anyone could have hoped, according to US TV and newspaper reports. But does a successful Iraqi election (one where a large number of people risk their lives to vote) vindicate the US invasion? Hopefully it will not provide the pentagon with the moral ammunition it needs to invade other countries in W's "axis of evil" (Iran?) but instead just allow it a brief sigh of relief--something of clear benefit to the Iraqi people may finally have come out of the invasion. "The Iraqi people themselves made this a resounding success," W said in a speech today at around 1pm Eastern time, filmed by ABC News..."Men and women have taken rightful control of their country's destiny." The New York Times says "if the insurgents wanted to stop people in Baghdad from voting, they failed. If they wanted to cause chaos, they failed. The voters were completely defiant, and there was a feeling that the people of Baghdad, showing a new, positive attitude, had turned a corner." Note that Iraqis, like the Indians, dip their fingers in indelible ink when they vote so that no one can vote more than once. It's a clever idea, why don't European and North American countries do this too?

Of Robots and Reggae

Tomorrow I am going to watch a robot competition at MIT and then will dance the night away at Boston's only reggae club. Full reports will follow. It couldn't possibly be more exciting than the Spam Conference I went to last Friday, also at MIT.

Re-enacted by Bunnies

The snow continues here in BTown and with these hilarious

miniflix the long winter evenings fly by:

The Shining in 30 seconds:

http://www.angryalien.com/0504/shiningbunnies.html

Jaws in 30 seconds:

http://www.angryalien.com/0804/jawsbunnies.asp

Alien in 30 seconds:

http://www.angryalien.com/0704/alienbunnies.html

Titanic in 30 seconds:

http://www.angryalien.com/0604/titanicbunnies.html

The Exorcist in 30 seconds:

http://www.angryalien.com/0204/exorcistbunnies.html

Nonagenarians

You might think you would just relax, let sleeping dogs lie and leave the rat-race if you made it to 90+ and still had millions of dollars to play with. Not so if you are Napa's Robert Mondavi, a pioneer of the California fine wine business and self-made millionaire. Remarkably, the 92-year old, who can barely walk but still has a mind as sharp as a pin, and his 90-year old brother Peter announced today that they will found a new winery together, mending a bitter row that extranged the brothers for over 40 years. Robert's own winery, the source of the row, was recently sold to a larger company for $1 billion. I wonder why I am so taken by this tale. Really, it's not just because I love his Pinot Noir!

More on the word blizzard

FYI Etymology (you can tell I am snowed-in):

US origin, first surface in a newspaper during harsh storms on East Coast US in 1880-1881 but was used colloquially before then, possibly an onomatopeic word coming from blast, blow, bluster or blister (?).

All according to hard copy edition of Oxford Etymological Dictionary--sorry, can't seem to find a link.

Schneesturm

That's German for blizzard.

I am currently trapped in my house near Boston where a Schneesturm is raging.

According to the TV, it is the worst blizzard for 200 years.

But what exactly is a blizzard? The term is thrown around in New England but there must be a precise definition. Here is Wikipedia's but if you can't be bothered to click, a short summary is that a blizzard involves winds over 35 mph, filled with snow that blow for more than 3 hours solidly.

To put that in context, wind loaded with particles of ice and snow has been battering us for over 12 hours.

It looks like a picture postcard. As a former Londoner, I get extremely excited about things like this and rapidly turn into a 4-year old child. How long did I spend as a kid dreaming of soft snow up to my neck that turns cars into little antenna sticks?

The TV stations are warning us to stay inside--but I'd take it with a pinch of salt. Afterall broadcasters do love to create panic (Fox News has already labelled it "Storm '05"), which is highly suspicious. They take any opportunity to warn us not to go out--but couldn't this be because they have their own reasons to pin us to our sofas for days on end in fear, with nothing to do but watch TV for updates? I mean, unless you are stupid and go out in shorts and flip flops, you should be much safer when the world has ground to a halt--fewer cars, muggers and axe murderers for a start.

So I will certainly be ignoring Fox News and diving in up to my neck...byeeee