Archive for 2009

We might’ve spot­ted this sucker on the way home yes­ter­day. The time frame cer­tainly fits. We thought it was a shoot­ing star but it’s trail was much thicker so it was prob­a­bly it.

ASP WCT sce­nar­ios going into the penul­ti­mate stop of the tour (Peniche)

If Mick Fan­ning were to win the upcom­ing Rip Curl Pro Search Portugal:

Joel Parkin­son (AUS), 28, would need a 9^th or bet­ter and Adri­ano de Souza (BRA), 22, would need a 3^rd or bet­ter to pre­vent him from clinch­ing the 2009 ASP World Title in Portugal.

If Mick Fan­ning fin­ishes Runner-​​Up at the upcom­ing Rip Curl Pro Search Portugal:

Joel Parkin­son (AUS), 28, would need a 17^th or bet­ter, Adri­ano de Souza (BRA), 22, a 5^th or bet­ter, Kelly Slater (USA), 37, and Bede Dur­bidge (AUS), 26, a win to pre­vent him from clinch­ing the 2009 ASP World Title in Portugal.

If Mick Fan­ning (AUS), 28, fin­ishes 3^rd at the upcom­ing Rip Curl Pro Search Portugal:

Joel Parkin­son (AUS), 28, would need a 33^rd, Adri­ano de Souza (BRA), 22, a 9^th, Kelly Slater (USA), 37, and Bede Dur­bidge (AUS), 26, will need a Runner-​​Up fin­ish, and C.J. Hob­good (USA), 30, and Taj Bur­row (AUS), 31, will need to win to pre­vent Fan­ning from clinch­ing the 2009 ASP World Title in Portugal.

(via)

Given that a 10^th title is noth­ing but a math­e­mat­i­cal shot for Kelly (not that it looks he’s even car­ing), I’m root­ing for Joel. Mick’s surfs like a aer­o­bics class, Bede just surfs plain ugly (and has been aver­age at the most all year) and the rest is plain unlikely. But, as the author states, sil­lier things have happened.

Look, I think the bril­liant and beau­ti­ful thing in life is that any­one can do any­thing,” he said. “When I used to go to spe­cial needs, we got laughed at, but we’re not sup­posed to all be aca­d­e­mic. What is edu­ca­tion? A bunch of stuff that peo­ple think we should know. Ulti­mately if you can put a wall up, if you can paint, if you can work with other peo­ple and, most impor­tant, if you find out what you are good at, that’s the key. Kids can do detailed, tech­ni­cal things, and they can do them well. Have you seen them on skate­boards and surf­ing? It doesn’t have to be a BMX, it can be a pot and a pan and a knife, but we wrap them up in cot­ton wool and treat them like babies and they’re not.

~ Jamie Oliver Puts America’s Diet on a Diet a bril­liant arti­cle and insight on Jamie on NYTimes​.com

Explain­ing Google Street View to the Japan­ese. Cute as a button!

At times the two cen­tral pro­tag­o­nists behaved like peo­ple whose day job was work­ing up skits for Monty Python.…they had dis­tinctly lack­adaisi­cal work habits. Wat­son played sev­eral sets of ten­nis every after­noon and spent his evenings alter­nately chas­ing ‘pop­sies’ at Cam­bridge par­ties and going to the movies. Crick, who rarely showed up at the lab before 10 AM and took a cof­fee break and hour later repeat­edly appeared to lose inter­est in the prob­lem of DNA. On more than one occa­sion, vital piece of infor­ma­tion were obtained not through hard work but as a result of chance con­ver­sa­tions in the tea line at the Cavendish laboratory.

A quote from Richard Ogle’s “Smart World”, on Wat­son and Crick’s dis­cov­ery of DNA’s struc­ture. Chas­ing pop­sies, heh.

Gor­geous “The Weak­erthans” t-​​shirt at Cin­der Block

Kings Of Con­ve­nience — Boat Behind. Best feel good music video of the year.

The 50 best foods in the world and where to eat them

This’d be my kind of round the world trip.

When you’re hired to clean up the offices of Arti­fi­cial Pro­duc­tions and open the closet door on the third floor, plug in the strange gray machine that you find there. When it boots up, it will ask: “do you love me?” Say  “yes, I do love you, machine.” Take her home with you and plug her in. Hook her up to an old syn­the­sizer key­board. And talk to her. Get to know her. Help her heal. Start a new com­pany with her as equal part­ner and sell her amaz­ing, nearly-​​unlimited out­put of fresh, upbeat songs to a top 40 mar­ket dispir­ited by the glut of sad songs she wrote ear­lier. Pro­tect her from the cruel agents of the National Secu­rity Admin­is­tra­tion who would use her for their own needs.

#73 on the same list.

Build a machine capa­ble of feel­ing and make it fall in love with you, then aban­don it for six months in a closet with­out an inter­net con­nec­tion and only top 40 radio as com­pany. Take the hun­dreds of sad love songs it writes and sell them under a vari­ety of pseu­do­nyms to A-​​list stars. Before you retire to your own island, unplug the machine so that no one ever dis­cov­ers your secret.

#35 on Paul Ford’s How to Say I Love You fea­ture on The Morn­ing News.