Wow. I'd been looking for a good Civilization like strategy game for my Nintendo DS. Not searching all that hard, really, just wishing for a good, portable turn-based strategy game. Advance Wars: Days of Ruin is kind of fun, sort of, but not really much in the way of grand empire building. I'd figured the game I was looking for simply didn't exist.
What a pleasant surprise, then, to discover that Civ is, in fact, making a move to consoles, including the DS. Comes out in early July. Woo-hoo!
I was reading about this a month or so ago. Not sure what prompted me to remember it now, but in case anybody's visiting the Twin Cities later this summer, and wants to spend anywhere from $500 to $2,000 (depending on how many "shots" you want) on some very well-aged single malt scotch, then the St. Paul Hotel is the place for you.
In time for the biggest political bash to hit the Twin Cities in living memory, one St. Paul bar has made an extravagant business decision: to corner the market on the best booze in town.
Republicans coming to their national convention in September can buy a "pony shot" of 55-year-old single-malt scotch, fresh from a famed 184-year-old distillery in the Scottish Highlands.
For $525 a glass.
Source
Heh. I was struggling with the concept of spending $15 for a glass of 12-year old Macallan at the hotel bar while I was in India (ultimately deciding that it just wasn't worth it). I can't even begin to imagine the stratosphere where you're willing to spend the five bills on one ounce of alcohol. I mean, I'd be sitting in those rich leather chairs thinking that I could buy an entire bottle of 25-year-old Macallan for the same price as one ounce of the 55-year-old stuff. Or, heck, give me a case of really good wine for the same price as either of the single-malt-scotch options.
See, that's my problem. Always looking for a better deal.
Again, from Kottke, we've got a list of 1,001 things to do/see before you die. Although the most recent movie is from 2005 (missing out on The Departed, Pan's Labyrinth, and, inexplicably, both Harold & Kumar Go To White Castle and Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure), it's still pretty comprehensive. Bottom line? For an english major, I've watched way too many movies, and haven't read enough good books.
Brokeback Mountain (2005)Sideways (2004)
Frahrenheit 9/11 (2004)
The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003)
Mulholland Dr.(2001)
Moulin Rouge (2001)
Spirited Away (2001)
Amelie (2001)
Memento (2000)
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000)
Meet the Parents (2000)
Requiem for a Dream (2000)
Gladiator (2000)
The Matrix (1999)
The Sixth Sense (1999)
American Beauty (1999)
Being John Malkovich (1999)
Fight Club (1999)
Three Kings (1999)
The Blair Witch Project (1999)
Magnolia (1999)
The Big Lebowski (1998)
There's Something About Mary (1998)
The Thin Red Line (1998)
Saving Private Ryan (1998)
Titanic (1997)
Princess Mononoke (1997)
L.A. Confidential (1997)
Scream (1996)
Trainspotting (1996)
Independence Day (1996)
Shine (1996)
Fargo (1996)
The Usual Suspects (1995)
Seven (1995)
Heat (1995)
Clueless (1995)
Toy Story (1995)
The Shawshank Redemption (1994)
The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert (1994)
Pulp Fiction (1994)
Natural Born Killers (1994)
The Lion King (1994)
Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994)
Clerks (1994)
Forrest Gump (1994)
Hoop Dreams (1994)
Schindler's List (1993)
Jurassic Park (1993)
Groundhog Day (1993)
The Crying Game (1992)
Reservoir Dogs (1992)
The Player (1992)
Strictly Ballroom (1992)
The Double Life of Veronique (1991)
JFK (1991)
The Silence of the Lambs (1991)
Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)
Thelma & Louise (1991)
My Own Private Idaho (1991)
Boyz 'n the Hood (1991)
Total Recall (1990)
Edward Scissorhands (1990)
Pretty Woman (1990)
Dances with Wolves (1990)
Goodfellas (1990)
Say Anything (1989)
Sex, Lies and Videotape (1989)
Roger & Me (1989)
Do the Right Thing (1989)
My Left Foot (1989)
The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover (1989)
When Harry Met Sally (1989)
Batman (1989)
Rain Man (1988)
Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988)
Die Hard (1988)
Dangerous Liaisons (1988)
Big (1988)
The Naked Gun (1988)
A Fish Called Wanda (1988)
Cinema Paradiso (1988)
Akira (1988)
Bull Durham (1988)
Fatal Attraction (1987)
The Untouchables (1987)
Moonstruck (1987)
The Princess Bride (1987)
Good Morning, Vietnam (1987)
Full Metal Jacket (1987)
Raising Arizona (1987)
Babette's Feast (1987)
Top Gun (1986)
Platoon (1986)
A Room with a View (1986)
Ferris Bueller's Day Off (1986)
Aliens (1986)
The Fly (1986)
Blue Velvet (1986)
Stand By Me (1986)
The Color Purple (1985)
Prizzi's Honor (1985)
Kiss of the Spider Woman (1985)
Brazil (1985)
Back to the Future (1985)
Out of Africa (1985)
The Breakfast Club (1985)
The Natural (1984)
A Passage to India (1984)
Ghostbusters (1984)
Beverly Hills Cop (1984)
This Is Spinal Tap (1984)
A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)
Paris, Texas (1984)
The Terminator (1984)
Amadeus (1984)
Scarface (1983)
The Right Stuff (1983)
Terms of Endearment (1983)
The Big Chill (1983)
Star Wars: Episode VI - Return of the Jedi (1983)
A Christmas Story (1983)
Fanny and Alexander (1982)
A Question of Silence (1982)
Gandhi (1982)
Diner (1982)
Tootsie (1982)
Blade Runner (1982)
Poltergeist (1982)
The Thing (1982)
E.T. : The Extra-Terestrial (1982)
Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1981)
An American Werewolf in London (1981)
Reds (1981)
Body Heat (1981)
Chariots of Fire (1981)
Gallipoli (1981)
The Boat (1981)
Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)
Raging Bull (1980)
Airplane! (1980)
The Elephant Man (1980)
Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back (1980)
The Shining (1980)
Ordinary People (1980)
Mad Max (1979)
The Muppet Movie (1979)
The Jerk (1979)
Apocalypse Now (1979)
Life of Brian (1979)
Kramer vs. Kramer (1979)
Being There (1979)
Breaking Away (1979)
Alien (1979)
Halloween (1978)
Dawn of the Dead (1978)
Grease (1978)
The Deer Hunter (1978)
Saturday Night Fever (1977)
Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)
Star Wars (1977)
The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976)
Taxi Driver (1976)
Rocky (1976)
All the President's Men (1976)
The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976)
Carrie (1976)
Jaws (1975)
Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975)
The Wall (1975)
The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975)
One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975)
Dog Day Afternoon (1975)
Blazing Saddles (1974)
Chinatown (1974)
Young Frankenstein (1974)
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974)
The Exorcist (1973)
Enter the Dragon (1973)
American Graffiti (1973)
The Sting (1973)
High Plains Drifter (1972)
Cabaret (1972)
Straw Dogs (1971)
Dirty Harry (1971)
The French Connection (1971)
Harold and Maude (1971)
Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (1971)
A Clockwork Orange (1971)
M*A*S*H (1970)
Patton (1970)
Easy Rider (1969)
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969)
2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
Planet of the Apes (1968)
Bonnie and Clyde (1967)
Cool Hand Luke (1967)
The Graduate (1967)
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (1966)
Blowup (1966)
The Sound of Music (1965)
Doctor Zhivago (1965)
A Hard Day's Night (1964)
Dr. Strangelove (1964)
My Fair Lady (1964)
Goldfinger (1964)
The Great Escape (1963)
The Nutty Professor (1963)
The Birds (1963)
The Manchurian Candidate (1962)
Lawrence of Arabia (1962)
West Side Story (1961)
The Hustler (1961)
Psycho (1960)
Ben-Hur (1959)
Some Like It Hot (1959)
North by Northwest (1959)
The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957)
The Ten Commandments (1956)
Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956)
Forbidden Planet (1956)
Rebel Without a Cause (1955)
Bad Day at Black Rock (1955)
The Seven Samurai (1954)
Rear Window (1954)
Singin' in the Rain (1952)
The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951)
The African Queen (1951)
It's a Wonderful Life (1946)
Notorious (1946)
The Big Sleep (1946)
Casablanca (1942)
Dumbo (1941)
Citizen Kane (1941)
Pinocchio (1940)
The Grapes of Wrath (1940)
Fantasia (1940)
Wuthering Heights (1939)
Gunga Din (1939)
Gone With the Wind (1939)
The Wizard of Oz (1939)
Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939)
The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938)
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937)
Mutiny on the Bounty (1935)
Captain Blood (1935)
The Thin Man (1934)
It Happened One Night (1934)
King Kong (1933)
Duck Soup (1933)
Frankenstein (1931)
Metropolis (1927)
Nosferatu, A Symphony of Terror(1922)
Spotted this last week in advance of the Players Championship. I've hacked my way through more than a few golf courses in my day, but this is exceptional.
Playing from the championship tees at Pete Dye's unforgiving TPC Sawgrass course, Spagnolo was ensconced in a bitter battle for worst of the worst with fellow competitor Jack Pulford, at 104 over par through 16 holes.Ouch. Just like Tin Cup, except with much worse golfing.
Then came No. 17.
Often called the most exciting hole in golf, the par-3 17th hole frequently is referred to as having an island green, but it's really a peninsula, with a thin strip of land allowing players access to the putting surface from the left side and water surrounding it from all other directions. To Spagnolo, it was intimidation personified.
"That could have been the English Channel I was trying to hit across," he says. "It was that daunting of a shot. It just looked like a near impossible idea to contemplate."
On his initial tee shot, Spagnolo found the water hazard. He hit another and found the water again. And again. And again. And again.
"It was painful to watch," Carney says. "Funny at first, and then not funny at all. You can't get a hip-high wedge shot to stop on a green like the 17th from 100 yards. [He] hit the green seven times. Those shots had no chance of staying on the green."
Source
I'll have to parse through this list of 1,001 books to read before you're dead to see how many I've read. Problem with lists like this -- as much as I love them -- is that even if I spend the next 10 years catching up on great literature from the last two centuries, there'll still be more new books added to the list.
Ah, well. No way to finish them all, but at least it'll provide good material for my Amazon Wish List so I can slowly chip away.
Link via Kottke.
Update: here's my list. Definitely have some catching up to do, but happy to have more than 50 down:
The Blind Assassin - Margaret Atwood
Cryptonomicon - Neal Stephenson
Possession - A.S. Byatt
Cat's Eye - Margaret Atwood
Foucault's Pendulum - Umberto Eco
The Long Dark Teatime of the Soul - Douglas Adams
Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency - Douglas Adams
Beloved - Toni Morrison
Watchmen - Alan Moore & David Gibbons
Less Than Zero - Bret Easton Ellis
The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
The Unbearable Lightness of Being - Milan Kundera
Neuromancer - William Gibson
Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
The Name of the Rose - Umberto Eco
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
Interview With the Vampire - Anne Rice
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings - Maya Angelou
Slaughterhouse-five - Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
In Cold Blood - Truman Capote
Everything That Rises Must Converge - Flannery O'Connor
Cat's Cradle - Kurt Vonnegut
Pale Fire - Vladimir Nabokov
Stranger in a Strange Land - Robert Heinlein
Franny and Zooey - J.D. Salinger
Catch-22 - Joseph Heller
The Once and Future King - T.H. White
On the Road - Jack Kerouac
The Lord of the Rings - J.R.R. Tolkien
Lord of the Flies - William Golding
Invisible Man - Ralph Ellison
The Old Man and the Sea - Ernest Hemingway
Wise Blood - Flannery O'Connor
The Catcher in the Rye - J.D. Salinger
I, Robot - Isaac Asimov
Nineteen Eighty-Four - George Orwell
Animal Farm - George Orwell
The Little Prince - Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
For Whom the Bell Tolls - Ernest Hemingway
Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
Their Eyes Were Watching God - Zora Neale Hurston
The Hobbit - J.R.R. Tolkien
Absalom, Absalom! - William Faulkner
Tropic of Cancer - Henry Miller
Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
A Farewell to Arms - Ernest Hemingway
The Sound and the Fury - William Faulkner
Remembrance of Things Past - Marcel Proust
The Sun Also Rises - Ernest Hemingway
The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald
A Room With a View - E.M. Forster
Dracula - Bram Stoker
Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn - Mark Twain
Treasure Island - Robert Louis Stevenson
Middlemarch - George Eliot
Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
The Mill on the Floss - George Eliot
A Tale of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
Walden - Henry David Thoreau
Bleak House - Charles Dickens
Moby-Dick - Herman Melville
The Scarlet Letter - Nathaniel Hawthorne
Wuthering Heights - Emily Brontë
Jane Eyre - Charlotte Brontë
The Count of Monte-Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
The Pit and the Pendulum - Edgar Allan Poe
Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
Le Père Goriot - Honoré de Balzac
Ivanhoe - Sir Walter Scott
Frankenstein - Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
Persuasion - Jane Austen
Emma - Jane Austen
Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
Dangerous Liaisons - Pierre Choderlos de Laclos
Tristram Shandy - Laurence Sterne
A Modest Proposal - Jonathan Swift
Gulliver's Travels - Jonathan Swift
The Thousand and One Nights - Anonymous
Now to figure out my priorities for future books...
So I rarely take any of the advice that Microsoft Word gives me regarding grammar. It hates my tendency to write incomplete sentences. Crazy. Here's what it suggested the other day, when I asked it to take a look at a 2,000 word memoir (an excerpt from a much larger piece, really, that I hope stands well on it's own).
Okay. Fine. I let it correct this one, just to see why it thought I should be capitalizing "of." But then it still appears to have issues.
Freaking psychotic software. You can't have it both ways.
We were at a local high school this weekend for a dance competition. Among the various posters and signs scattered throughout the school -- advertising prom and yearbooks, baseball games and diversity awareness -- was this gem immediately inside the main lobby.
Of course I'm somewhat biased, English major and all, but come on. Twelve years of education and you've got to be able to at least get that one word right.
Interesting article on creativity, innovation, and habits:
Habits are a funny thing. We reach for them mindlessly, setting our brains on auto-pilot and relaxing into the unconscious comfort of familiar routine. "Not choice, but habit rules the unreflecting herd," William Wordsworth said in the 19th century. In the ever-changing 21st century, even the word "habit" carries a negative connotation.
So it seems antithetical to talk about habits in the same context as creativity and innovation. But brain researchers have discovered that when we consciously develop new habits, we create parallel synaptic paths, and even entirely new brain cells, that can jump our trains of thought onto new, innovative tracks.
Rather than dismissing ourselves as unchangeable creatures of habit, we can instead direct our own change by consciously developing new habits. In fact, the more new things we try -- the more we step outside our comfort zone -- the more inherently creative we become, both in the workplace and in our personal lives.
NYT
I'd meant to write about a similar topic late last week, but was too under-the-weather. I'll try to get to my own thoughts on making and breaking habits within the next few days. In particular, the technique mentioned later in the article -- kaizen, which I hadn't heard about prior to reading this.
Via Boing Boing, the National Marrow Donor program is offering free online registration until May 19th:
http://www.marrow.org/HELP/Join_the_Donor_Registry/Join_Now_Special/TM/tm08_join_now.html
They've also got a good list of Myths and Facts about bone marrow donation. I donated marrow back in 1990. Not as part of the National Registry, but as part of my treatment. It was an "insurance policy," taken after I was in remission, and locked up in a freezer somewhere at Fred Hutchinson, in case I ever relapsed. The thought was that I'd donate my own (cancer-free) marrow to myself if I needed it. There's some discomfort -- my lower back was sore for a few days afterwards -- but none of that really mattered in the larger scheme of things. I'd gladly trade a couple of days of pain for a chance to save someone's life down the road.
Front page on both local papers, plus fodder for drive time radio last night.
The Belle Plaine man who fatally shot his 8-year-old son in the chest last month while turkey hunting had alcohol and marijuana in his system at the time, according to a felony second-degree manslaughter charge filed Monday.
Anthony Klaseus, 39, told authorities that he told his son, Hunter, to stay put as he circled a field to approach turkeys sometime after 5 p.m. April 19 in a field east of Crahan Lane near County Road 6 in Sibley County, according to charges filed in Sibley County District Court.
Klaseus called to the turkeys. They called back and moved toward him.
"Then I heard something snap or break near me, and a large figure rose up," he told authorities. "I thought it was a turkey, and I shot and it went down. I thought I shot the turkey. Then my son jumped back up screaming and then fell back down."
http://www.startribune.com/local/south/18608114.html
Every paragraph, it seems, has even more details that make the story worse. I continue to be amazed at the level of irresponsibility and self-absorption of some parents. There's a time and a place for drinking beer and taking a few hits from your bong, but you've got to hope that most people would realize that a hunting afternoon with your son isn't one of those times or places.
Been "on the road" for better than 20 hours now, from Bangalore to Frankfurt to Chicago. The last leg of the journey, the quick hop from O'Hare to Minneapolis-St.Paul turns out to be delayed by about an hour. Hmm. I wonder why?
Excellent. Nothing like weaving around a few thunderstorms on the way home. Actually, on the way out to India, two weeks ago, our flight into Chicago was delayed for identical reasons.
Update: yawn. For all the talk, even from the flight crew, about keeping buckled "for safety reasons" and cutting short beverage service and all that, the flight was smooth as silk.
Wow. For the past five years, Exxon Mobil has been the most profitable company in America. For 2007, their $40 billion in profit was just about as much as the #2 (GE) and #3 (Chevron) companies combined. At least three years running they've also set a record for the highest-ever annual profit.
But, hey! Did you hear? We'll all be getting $600 in the mail soon!
Actually, given what I've been hearing about the prices at the pumps, I'd bet much of that will ultimately end up generating $50 billion in profits for 2008. The discrepancy between a disastrous housing market, near-record jobless rates, an economy in a tailspin and record profits from Exxon is mind-numbingly ridiculous.
Don't know which is more impressive: the home-made workout, or the seven kids. Although writing numbers on the foreheads to keep track of weights is genius.
According to this trusted news source, Paramount will be adapting the much-loved "Iron Man" trailer into a full-length feature film later this summer. Sounds like they're keeping the original cast (thankfully), but I hope they won't screw it up.
Will try to carve out some time to write a bit more about the trip, but wanted to post this photo (and maybe a few others later) that I took today while visiting the Bangalore Bannerghatta Zoo. This was in an impressive butterfly park, adjacent to the main zoo.
An important, essential discussion.
Batman had a much more tragic childhood (watching your parents die is infinitely worse than hearing your biological parents died without ever having met them), his crimefighting style is based more on intelligence and planning that Superman's brute force, and he's actually kicked the living shit out of Superman at least twice. Batman exhibits more moral maturity than Superman: Superman always upholds the status quo, but in Year One Batman goes on a crusade against Gotham's corrupt elite. Batman is a detective, a scientist, a master of disguise, and a martial arts expert; Superman is a burly asshole in a red cape with big muscles.
Via Kottke.
Speaking of views, here are a couple that I snapped on vacation, tripod-less, hoping to later stitch together (tried AutoStitch for these) the images to create a panoramic view. There are some shots that deserve to have a greater sense of scale than a single photo can provide.
The first -- stitched together from 3 photos -- is the view from the deck out across the resort we stayed at this year. Kiddie pool is just below us, followed by some nice landscaping, then the pool bar, and finally the beach and ocean.
The second -- stitched together from seven photos -- is the view from the resort's only (current) restaurant. It's right on the beach, under an enormous palapa. There are no walls facing the ocean, just a series of tall windows that were usually left wide open. That way, even if you were sitting inside, you'd get the ocean breeze. And although the quality of the food left some room for improvement, it quickly became a favorite spot to eat, primarily because of this view.
The Author