Grumpasaurus.com

Why have I never before, until this moment, thought of the phrase “istanbulimia”?

If I were to open a trendy restaurant in Turkey frequented by models (and possibly wrestlers), I would totally name it Istanbulimia. Either that or it’s my new name for Nicole Richie.

Misc

Sorry, the evil soulless corporate drone trolls (not to mention Betty Bulldozer) are keeping me busy. Booooooo.

Misc

It’s interesting how Bill Clinton was vilified by the right for getting too much pussy … and Hilary for not giving enough.

Misc

Does anybody blogroll anymore? I suppose they do, but with the move to almost everything received via a feed reader, they’re less useful than they used to be. Still, I guess it’s a way to show some reciprocal lurve.

Now, who on earth should I link to? The big sites don’t need me, and unrequited rolling is kind of… well, too close to my relationship experience to be comfortable. Not that I’m not a totally smoking hot ladies man with throngs of admirers, of course. Because I am. Totally hot. And popular.

Misc

or, in this case, precious and romantic

Literature, Misc

The Worst Mistake in the History of the Human Race

To science we owe dramatic changes in our smug self-image. Astronomy taught us that our earth isn’t the center of the universe but merely one of billions of heavenly bodies. From biology we learned that we weren’t specially created by God but evolved along with millions of other species. Now archaeology is demolishing another sacred belief: that human history over the past million years has been a long tale of progress. In particular, recent discoveries suggest that the adoption of agriculture, supposedly our most decisive step toward a better life, was in many ways a catastrophe from which we have never recovered. With agriculture came the gross social and sexual inequality, the disease and despotism, that curse our existence.

At first, the evidence against this revisionist interpretation will strike twentieth century Americans as irrefutable. We’re better off in almost every respect than people of the Middle Ages, who in turn had it easier than cavemen, who in turn were better off than apes. Just count our advantages. We enjoy the most abundant and varied foods, the best tools and material goods, some of the longest and healthiest lives, in history. Most of us are safe from starvation and predators. We get our energy from oil and machines, not from our sweat. What neo-Luddite among us would trade his life for that of a medieval peasant, a caveman, or an ape?
…
While the case for the progressivist view seems overwhelming, it’s hard to prove. How do you show that the lives of people 10,000 years ago got better when they abandoned hunting and gathering for farming? Until recently, archaeologists had to resort to indirect tests, whose results (surprisingly) failed to support the progressivist view. Here’s one example of an indirect test: Are twentieth century hunter-gatherers really worse off than farmers? Scattered throughout the world, several dozen groups of so-called primitive people, like the Kalahari bushmen, continue to support themselves that way. It turns out that these people have plenty of leisure time, sleep a good deal, and work less hard than their farming neighbors. For instance, the average time devoted each week to obtaining food is only 12 to 19 hours for one group of Bushmen, 14 hours or less for the Hadza nomads of Tanzania. One Bushman, when asked why he hadn’t emulated neighboring tribes by adopting agriculture, replied, “Why should we, when there are so many mongongo nuts in the world?”

While farmers concentrate on high-carbohydrate crops like rice and potatoes, the mix of wild plants and animals in the diets of surviving hunter-gatherers provides more protein and a bettter balance of other nutrients. In one study, the Bushmen’s average daily food intake (during a month when food was plentiful) was 2,140 calories and 93 grams of protein, considerably greater than the recommended daily allowance for people of their size. It’s almost inconceivable that Bushmen, who eat 75 or so wild plants, could die of starvation the way hundreds of thousands of Irish farmers and their families did during the potato famine of the 1840s.

A 1987 article by Jared Diamond before he became Jared mofo’n Diamond!!!! (Guns, Germs, & Steel; Collapse).

I have nothing substantive to add, just that it was an enjoyable read and an interesting take on ideas that he’s expanded on in his later works.

Books, Misc, Science

China Attempted To Blind U.S. Satellites With Laser

China has fired high-power lasers at U.S. spy satellites flying over its territory in what experts see as a test of Chinese ability to blind the spacecraft, according to sources.

It remains unclear how many times the ground-based laser was tested against U.S. spacecraft or whether it was successful.

But the combination of China’s efforts and advances in Russian satellite jamming capabilities illustrate vulnerabilities to the U.S. space network are at the core of U.S. Air Force plans to develop new space architectures and highly classified systems, according to sources.

(you’ll have to excuse the formatting, I’m working on a way to get screenplay formatting to merge well with WP. And for those that don’t know, or those that are about to shell out hundreds of bucks on screenwriting software, Celtx is both Open Source (free as in speech) and free (as in costs-no-money); using much of the Mozilla code (including the new calendar/Sunbird stuff). It does export some ugly HTML, though, so you’ll want to be careful before copy-pasting that shizzle into your blog. PRE tags with the text output is the quickest way, but not the prettiest.)

Misc, Open Source, Screenplay, Technology, War

This morning as I was hitting the snooze button and trying to get Ms. Grumpy up to take her monthly sprint through the car wash shower, I started saying the most random things ever. Things that made total sense to me at the time, were completely logical, and things upon which all reasonable persons could agree.

For example:

In my head I had a picture of this little icon in the top left corner of my vision. And the icon was lit up with a white (slight bluish tint), rectangular with rounded edges. The background of the icon was the solid white, the icon for “brights” was a single thick line pointing from NW to SE (icon box-relative), kind of like a compass needle. It was lit up, which meant her brights were on… which was important to know, because she needed that information in order to get into the shower.

See, awesome, huh! I hope when I do go insane it’s just as whimsical and interesting. Perhaps less functional and maybe with some more colors, please.

Grumpisms, Misc

Man gets home confinement for groping

A man accused of fondling home health care nurses while posing as a mentally retarded person who needed diapers changed has been sentenced to a year on home confinement.

That’s totally sick and wrong (when it’s nonconsenual). Unless you’re in Japan, in which case I think it’s considered standard courting procedure. You just have to make sure that the nurse isn’t some homicidal maniac who likes to put you in a bag and hack your extremities off. That would be bad. And yet, just desserts for the assaulter. Who totally looks like this guy:

Law, Misc, Sex

Happy talk like a pirate day, ya scurvy dogs!

Misc

Just when I thought it couldn’t get worse, this just in:

WASHINGTON (AP) — Air Force Secretary Michael Wynne said:

Nonlethal weapons such as high-power microwave devices should be used on American citizens in crowd-control situations before they are used on the battlefield, the Air Force secretary said Tuesday.

Domestic use would make it easier to avoid questions in the international community over any possible safety concerns, said Secretary Michael Wynne.

”If we’re not willing to use it here against our fellow citizens, then we should not be willing to use it in a wartime situation,” said Wynne. ”(Because) if I hit somebody with a nonlethal weapon and they claim that it injured them in a way that was not intended, I think that I would be vilified in the world press.”

The Air Force has funded research into nonlethal weapons, but he said the service isn’t likely to spend more money on development until injury issues are reviewed by medical experts and resolved.

The fact that he even consider this a viable testing procedure is absolutely apolling.
Where’s the sanctity of being a citizen of the United States of America?

Civil liberties, we don’t need no stinking civil liberties.
The Military Industrial Complex is out of frigging control to even suggest such a test!
Corporate Facism in full bloom I’m sorry to say!

American terrorism is alive and well it appears!

::

Evil, HFS, Idiots, Misc, Terrorism

oh, just go read it, will you?

The Greatest Australian Evar! is, of course, Pam Grier[fn1] on the female side and Arthur Schlessinger on the male side [fn2]

[fn1] not actually Australian
[fn2] also not Australian

Humor, Misc

Not only did I get home this morning to find this in my shower:

(without legs extended, it was about a 4″ diameter. Either a hobo or an aggressive house spider (the pic is of a hobo). I think it was the exact same spider that I cleared out of Ms. Grumpy’s house this past week and flushed. Good to know that our sewer systems are as connected the rest of our lives)

… but today’s bus trip into work also featured the return of The Stomper.[fn1]

Dammit. He’s a gregarious, nice guy… but he can’t drive a bus for shit. 6 blissful months with no bruised knees on the way to work, but like mold, the Taliban, and the song Xanadu… he’s baaaack. Absence did not make my heart grow fonder. Actually, I think absence fueled my burgeoning hatred for The Stomper, a fact I did not realize until I saw him again this morning. Grr.

A stomper is a bus driver who accelerates and decelerates rapidly to the extent that the passengers get whiplash and bruised knees. This bus driver is the king of the stompers, hence the honorific The Stomper.

Misc

Vacation time! See y’all in 2 weeks.

Misc

Would you rather have dolphin-flavored tuna or tuna-flavored dolphin?

Misc