What's the Matter With Kansas? (T. Frank)

Eureka! Finally a book that manages to be original and not controversial!

Despite frequents jabs against his own home state, Mr. Frank manages to give us an outstanding introduction to how Kansas turned from the most progressive state in the Union to one of the most conservative and (in the eyes of the authore) most backwards states.

And the reason is: elitism!

Would you have thought that possible? Mr. Frank traces the average Kansan and finds out that the class warfare that made Kansas lean to the left is a thing of the past: there are not enough workers to make a majority anywhere.

United 93 (2006)

There’s a movie that didn’t quite have the success it was designed for. United 93 is a docudrama about the plane that was hijacked, but whose passengers managed to neutralize the terrorists. In the end, the plane crashes on a field in Pennsylvania; despite the tragedy, the heroic effort of the crew and passengers saved possibly thousands of lives.

The problem with 9/11 movies is that the events of that day unfolded in a way that has etched memories for a lifetime. Everyone that has experienced 9/11 has very personal experiences of the horror we all felt, every one of us in our own way. The depth of the emotions that day can evoke in me is beyond my own comprehension.

Needed CPR

Yesterday we had Castro Street Fair in town, and that meant I had to take MUNI to get to the gym. Not the best of experiences for a novice: I found myself putting the BART card in, only to hear that one is not valid in MUNI (what an idiocy!). Then I had to get change, since the turnstiles in the stations accept only coins and the changing machines only $5 and $1 bills. Sigh!

[Joke] Understanding Engineers

Understanding Engineers – Take One

Two engineering students were walking across a university campus when one said, “Where did you get such a great bike?” The second engineer replied, “Well, I was walking along yesterday, minding my own business,when a beautiful woman rode up on this bike, threw it to the ground, took off all her clothes and said, “Take what you want.” The second engineer nodded approvingly and said, “Good choice; the clothes probably wouldn’t have fit you anyway.”

My neighbor's property

My neighbor invited me on a tour of their property, yesterday. She took me on her tractor and we drove all around. What a marvelous place!

The property is a long strip of land that goes from below mine all the way to the shared boundary line mauka. It looks strange on the map – like a snake that had one too many gerbils to eat. On the positive side, it has two gorgeous streams (one on each boundary line), and the proximity of the streams has made the banks flatter, making for easy stream access on most of the property.

Invasion of the moths

Coming home last night, I closed the door of the Hilo bedroom and didn’t notice it didn’t latch. The next itty wind slammed it wide open again, while I was running down to turn on the generator.

A few hours later, I am walking to the bathroom, and notice several moths. Strange, I think, I have never seen moths inside the house – where might they have come from?

That’s when I notice the wide open door. There are dozens of moths in sight, a flurry around each lamp. All look very similar: triangular wings, one inch long, look sturdier than the usual mainland moth.

[Joke] Washington Post neologism contest

Once again, The Washington Post has published the winning submissions to its yearly neologism contest, in which readers are asked to supply alternate meanings for common words.
The winners are:

1. Coffee (n.), the person upon whom one coughs.
2. Flabbergasted (adj.), appalled over how much weight you have gained.
3. Abdicate (v.), to give up all hope of ever having a flat stomach.
4. Esplanade (v.), to attempt an explanation while drunk.
5. Willy-nilly (adj.), impotent.
6. Negligent (adj.), describes a condition in which you absentmindedly answer the door in your nightgown.
7. Lymph (v.), to walk with a lisp.
8. Gargoyle (n.), olive-flavored mouthwash.
9. Flatulence (n.) emergency vehicle that picks you up after you are run over by a steamroller.
10. Balderdash (n.), a rapidly receding hairline.
11. Testicle (n.), a humorous question on an exam.
12. Rectitude (n.), the formal, dignified bearing adopted by proctologists.
13. Pokemon (n), a Rastafarian proctologist.
14. Oyster (n.), a person who sprinkles his conversation with Yiddishisms.
15. Frisbeetarianism (n.), (back by popular demand): The belief that, when you die, your Soul flies up onto the roof and gets stuck there.
16. Circumvent (n.), an opening in the front of boxer shorts worn by Jewish men.

The Washington Post’s Style Invitational also asked readers to take any word from the dictionary, alter it by adding, subtracting, or changing one letter, and supply a new definition.
Here are this year’s winners:

[Joke] Retirement bonus

The Navy found they had too many officers and decided to offer an early retirement bonus. They promised any officer who volunteered for retirement a bonus of $1,000 for every inch measured in a straight line between any two points on his body. The officer got to choose what those two points would be.

The first officer who accepted asked that he be measured from the top of his head to the tip of his toes. He was measured at six feet and walked out with a bonus of $72,000.

[Joke] A bottle of merlot

A gentleman at an expensive restaurant observed a startlingly attractive woman at another table and asked a waiter to send his best bottle of champagne to her.

The waiter brought the woman a botte and said, “This is from the gentleman seated over there,” indicating the sender.

She regarded the wine coolly for a second not looking at the man, and decided to send a reply note to him.

The waiter, who was lingering for a response, took the note from her and conveyed it to the gentleman.

What is zoom.searchbot?

I just realized I had never published my zOOm searchbot!

As you probably know, a searchbot (search plugin in Joomla) is a piece of software that, given a search term, returns a list of pieces of HTML that correspond to search results. Of course I wanted my zOOm search results to show up whenever someone searches on my site, so I just wrote a bot to accomplish that.

To download, please click on Downloads to the left!