This is what trackback does.

Wish I could have watched the Cards/’Stros game tonight. Chris Carpenter pitched 8 shutout innings against the best offense in the league and Roger Clemens. Shaky Isringhausen blew the save opportunity but was left in for the 10th to get the win.

Meanwhile, the Cubs dropped both games of a double-header to the Pirates, who just got finished splitting a nasty, shortened two-game series with the Cards.

By the way, I noticed that the time it took me to find and read all these articles (starting at stlcardinals.com and going to ESPN from there) and write this up is the same amount of time it took Aragorn to give his totally pussified coronation speech at the end of ROTK to when Sam Gamgee closes his door to thankfully conclude the hokiest portion of an otherwise (aside from a few other gooey, hokey scenes) outstanding film trilogy. Sorry Emily, but that ending would have been so much better with a good ole scouring of the shire in lieu of all the cheeseball epilogues. And possibly shorter.

Update: Kim du Toit has a ROTK review, in which he describes these endings thusly: “I felt like John Holmes after a twelve-chick daisychain.” Also mentions the move was too long so that “the members of the International I-Have-No-Life Set wouldn’t moan about how the Shires weren’t Scoured or whatever.” Oh fuck you, Kim. And rightly points out that the assault on the black gate is an obvious diversionary tactic. That part of the movie really irritated me too, this being the second time I’d seen the flick. In the movie, they provide no explanation of why storming the gates would work; they even say that it’s an obvious diversion that Sauron would see right through. But in the book, Aragorn figures that since Sauron knows that 1) the one ring had been found and was in Gandalf’s loose posession and 2) Aragorn had ascended the throne at Minas Tirith; he would conclude that Aragorn was foolishly and arrogantly wielding the one ring against his armies at the black gate, and that was what would draw his attention. I believe Aragorn explicitly tells him so in the books via the palantir, but Jeff would be the resident expert on such matters. In any case, the book made it clear why the diversion would be expected to work, and for good reasons–Sauron’s monomania would cause him to conclude that anyone with the ring would try to use it against him. The scene in the movie when they should have properly justified the assault was weak and lame for no obvious reason. That all being said, I liked the trilogy and undoubtedly couldn’t have made a better adaptation myself. It would have been boring as shit (and probably shot on mini-DV with my friends as actors). But maybe Nathan would have liked it more.

I suspect that Kim’s review is somewhat tongue-in-cheek along the lines of this one.

People who can’t adapt irritate me. I’m talking about those people who get a procedure for doing something that is obviously designed with a set of assumptions; and in the face of a situation where none of those assumptions are valid, they still follow the procedure exactly, whereas a bit of adaptation would make things run much more smoothly.

I mention this because the tour guides on campus are almost uniformly guilty of this inability to adapt, and today I witnessed an example of it that might entertain some. The procedure for giving tours assumes a large group, so the tour guides walk backwards and give the same bullshit-ridden spiel about the buildings. I know this because when I’m outside smoking, I see the tours go by and they always give the same story about my building’s architecture. The story is that it was built as an upside-down pyramid to protect the PLATO supercomputer in the basement of the building from Soviet nuclear attack. Supposedly the upper floors would fall around the basement and it would be safe from a direct nuclear blast. Then the tourguide will usually make a smarmy comment about Cold War-era paranoia to illustrate what a great education these kids on the tour will be getting here at the U of I. This story is ridiculous on every level. First off, the PLATO system wasn’t anything close to a supercomputer. It was cool, yeah, but not super. It was a lab where students could use text-based computers augmented with sound and graphics. The sound came off of big decks running in what is now my lab, and the graphics were microfiche, and were moved around by compressed air (also controlled from my lab, we still have a big tank in there that I would love to toss off the roof after graduating). The PLATO units also had some cool features like instant messaging technology (this is from the pre-pine era technologically, so think about how cool that must have been). So like I said, PLATO was a neat system, but not a supercomputer, and not at all a likely target of interest for Soviet ICBMs. I’ll ignore the idea that any building could be constructed to protect electronic equipment ten feet under the ground from a direct nuclear blast. The building’s design deserves more credit than this story gives it though. Having the office space built on concentric descending rings allows for every office to have a window that gets sunlight. So the building has a huge atrium in the center, and in the roof are tall windows. The outside offices have windows facing outside, naturally, and the inside offices have windows facing the atrium, and they get light from the tall windows in the roof. It’s a nice design, and I’d also like to take a few footballs into the atrium and punt them (also after I graduate).

But back to today’s tale. I saw a girl leading a tour consisting of two people. TWO PEOPLE. And instead of adapting to the situation and walking alongside them and pointing out buildings, eliciting information from them to figure out what they’d be interested in, she was walking backwards and giving the goofy bullshit-ridden stories.

OK, maybe that story wasn’t as entertaining as I’d thought. She looked really funny though, especially since she almost tripped over a stair walking backwards.

It was an ugly game and an ugly cycle. But a cycle it was (and big props to Daryle Ward for pulling it off); and a game as well, just check the standings for evidence. I got to see the last two innings, Ward’s single off Kline was a hideous little bouncer off the ground a few feet in front of the plate that bounced well over Pujols’ head for a base hit. Too bad all this great stuff I get to see, this cycle and the single-handed triple play from last season, are all evidence of my team playing subpar.

Here’s some impressive amateur investigation into the background of Adam Gadahn, one of the seven the FBI is looking for in suspicion of planning major terrorist attacks this summer. His investigation led to the Muslim Students Association at USC, which has an autobiography by this alleged terrorist; as well as the transcript of a speech by a Taliban representative from March 2001 that justifies their symbiotic relationship with Osama Bin Laden and al-Qaeda.

Nice work, Justin.

A joke. I laughed.

I’m getting a lot of traffic from people looking for a transcript of Bill Cosby’s convocation speech, since I mentioned looking for one last friday. Haven’t found one so far, but here’s what I have found:

Some excerpts

Scroll down past the Washingtonienne story

So don’t say I never did anything for youse.

A crowd of children began to chase away a pederast. Neighborhood men cornered him in a yard until the police arrived to arrest him.

Outstanding work!

Really??? That much???

Via Jaboobie

I re-enabled Haloscan commenting this morning. The blogger comments were fugly and pose a potential security risk for non-blogspot pages, since the comment login dialogue is easily spoofable, putting people’s login information at risk. The experiment is over, and I conclude that Blogger’s comment system is no good. They’re trying to build a blogger community, like livejournal.com has. I think that shit’s for the birds.

Ah Bill Whittle has the final essay for his book posted, an epic to be known as Strength. If you’ve never read Whittle, you’ve missed out, bigtime. Go read History which he wrote during the drive to Baghdad. It was one of the most inspiring pieces of writing I’ve read. A warning: Bill Whittle writes A LOT. He makes Den Beste look concise.

This was pointed out to me by Bloghorrea, who’s previous post links to the Five Kinds of Weblogs. I guess mine’s a really lousy ‘Zine’ type that gets updated a lot more frequently than is prototypical. Found him from a hilarious comment at Andrea Harris’, who left a comment at Hawspipe. Now you know the circuitous route to which I came to a weblog already on my blogroll. And knowing is half the battle.

Random thoughts on the passing scene:

Does this mean I’m not highly annoying, at least as far as blogging is concerned?

There may be no finer smell in the world than that of Hoppe’s No. 9, it’s bottled pride, I tell you.

My friend Dave and I used to want to be househusbands. On vacation now, I’m getting a taste of it. Yesterday I drove my girl to work at 8am, then cleaned up around my house all day. Changed her oil and brakepads and started repairing her headlamp that was damaged when a jackass ran into her parked car a while back. Picked her up at 11pm after an hour of smacking softballs and drinking beer. That would be the life, man! Of course, it takes weeks and weeks of hard work to amass a good amount of chores to make a day feel fulfilling. Maybe if I had kids. I’m just about of stuff to do today. Might have to get back to Metroid Prime and figure out what I was doing when I left off. There’s a patch in the backyard that we’re supposed to till tomorrow. I figure I can have that prepared by the time she gets off work. Or maybe I’ll just start drinking beers. That’ll impress the lady.

Shopping for a cellphone plan is pretty confusing. I always hated cellphones. Those hands free ones are really creepy. I’m out grocery shopping or something and the lady next to me starts talking like we’re in the middle of a conversation. And then when I try to play along, she acts like I’m the crazy person! I need one though. I’m not at home enough, not in the office enough. And having my engine blow up on me in the middle of nowhere last November was a sound wake-up call to get with the program and join the 21st century.

There was a lot more to Bill Cosby’s speech than is described in this article. I’ll try to find a transcript, he had a lot to say. In particular that the self-described “black leadership” out there is a bunch of charlatons. Then Kweisi Mfume spoke. Update: Joanne Jacobs has more. Not a full transcript, but part of what I’d heard is described:

Comedian Bill Cosby wants black Americans to follow the example of civil rights leaders in improving their neighbourhoods and reaching out for higher education.

“These people marched and were hit in the face with rocks to get an education and now we’ve got these knuckleheads walking around,” he said Monday evening at an NAACP gala commemorating the anniversary of the Brown v. Board of Education decision 50 years earlier.

“Take the neighbourhood back,” Cosby said, chiding parents who do not take an active role in caring for their children.

This was a brilliant move undertaken by the coalition in the city of Samawa. Read it, I implore you. That sort of thing doesn’t make the news.

I was struck by this piece of Sgt. Stryker’s describing the reactions of right-wing gunnuts like myself to the Abu Ghraib scandal; that we’ve gotten ourselves into a loop where we view everything that happens through the lens of how it effects Bush’s re-election chances. That we’ve concocted a left-wing big-media conspiracy to expllain the downplaying of Nick Berg’s snuff film with respect to the 24/7 Abu Ghraib coverage. The right-wing thesis is that the press is playing up Abu Ghraib and all the bad news from Iraq to hurt Bush. Stryker poses a more elegant thesis: Abu Ghraib is a case of Man-Bites-Dog; Nick Berg’s murder is Dog-Bites-Man. American GIs getting their jollies by sexually molesting bound prisoners is something that just doesn’t happen; Arabs gleefully killing an innocent man for wanting to help build their country’s telecom sector or mutilating the bodies of civilians on food convoys is to be expected.

His thesis allows the comforting conclusion that the press at least knows the good guys from the bad in this war. But it would be nice to have something like the Samawa festival on the news. I’m guessing that’s the real dog-bites-man type of news stories you’d get out of 80% of Iraq these days. Shame on these journalists for their orientalist thinking.

I knew that tongue had to be handy for something!

Nice to see that the terrorists have gotten themselves a shoddily built, but professional looking website. Just like their make-pretend government. Their mothers couldn’t be prouder had they blown themselves up and killed some Jewish teenagers.

Nice to see that they haven’t updated their Martyrs page since March. I guess it’s true, the old saying: Good fences make good neighbors.

Garry Kasparov wrote a fantastic column for the WSJ, Stop the Moral Equivalence that’s worth reading.

Between reading this post and noticing that one of the blogs in my roll has shut down, I updated it a bit. Added Blackfive, who is the proud recipient of a hat tip for pointing out the GK column; and Eye on the Left and Tom’s EPeoplePlace page are gone. Tom stopped updating in February, the busy bee.

I’m one of those who uses the blogroll for my own navigational purposes, I try to check out each one at least once a day.

This is a very interesting picture. It shows a large number of big fires active in North Korea. Could it be that the starving population has chosen to smoke themselves out? Or is the government burning down crops of those deemed undesirable. Or is it benign, the result of a widescale electrical storm? Seoul’s weather hasn’t looked so bad.

Finally figured out this goofy blogger comments thing… To log in to the comments thing, you need to have a blogger account, otherwise you have to leave it as anonymous. Then your name will link back to your profile in blogger. Blogger is slowly becoming E People Place. Kudos to Tom for being way ahead of the game.

It’s been a real, real long time since I’ve made fun of Germans around here. This should make up for it. Oh golly.

I’m not all that great with photoshop, can’t hold a candle to the kids at fark. But my friend Telly passed on a picture of this giant fish he caught, and I couldn’t resist giving it a try… For all you who I didn’t email this to, check out my hackish attempt:

And for those of you anglers, I don’t know where he caught this fish, but an educated guess would be somewhere in Canada. If he lets me know, I’ll post it here. Looks like he found a good spot! At least a good spot in the original picture, where there wasn’t a bear behind him, eyeing his pike… and steaks.

Update: Got an email from Telly describing the trip to an undisclosed lake two hours from civilization in the frozen Canadian north. Between two men they “ended up boating 35 pike and 4 bass in 6 hours” including that one to finish off the morning. Telly released that behemoth to spawn more monsters for another day. A fantastic story that I expect he’ll be telling his grandkids about someday, who will then go out and dream of catching that fish’s great-great-great-great-grandchildren.