Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them.

So thrilled was I that Fox lost their ridiculous lawsuit regarding Al Franken's Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them, I bought a copy the day the book came out. I felt a little uneasy, knowing I was buying it largely because of the lawsuit. That's why I was giddy when I found the book really deserves the attention. I suspect it would have reached the #1 spot with or without the lawsuit, though any opportunity to see Fox News look even stupider is fine by me.

The book is great. Franken is a riot, but more satisfying than the humor is the chronicle of ignorance and outright dishonesty of today's most reprehensible--and powerful--public figures.

Franken (backed by a sizeable Harvard research team) speaks with clarity and confidence. He also speaks with humility, and more than once apologizes for exploits he took a bit too far. But this only serves to underscore the unrepentant, arrogant figures that the book takes to task.

I found only one chapter a bit slow ("Operation Chickenhawk: Episode One"), but it was soon followed by a wonderful comic strip ("The Gospel of Supply Side Jesus") which more than made up for it. Overall, the book is a quick read, and well worth it.

...from ten dimensions away!

Tuesday's Red Meat is also funny. But I'm amused by silly things.

It was coincidence.

I don't usually read Foxtrot, but was amused by Monday's strip. Tuesday's installment was kinda cute, too. But today's makes me very, very happy.

That <i>specific order</i>? Oh, then that's okay.

Please tell me this is a joke. Metallica is claiming rights to the chord sequence E, F. Says Lars Ulrich:

We're not saying we own those two chords, individually - that would be ridiculous. We're just saying that in that specific order, people have grown to associate E, F with our music."

We're also coming to associate complete idocy. Keep it up.

Update: Probably a hoax. My bad. See the comments.

Only the integers really matter, anyway.

Buried in yesterday's Slashback on Slashdot was a link to an incredibly cool project. But I usually skip Slashbacks, so I didn't notice it.

Luckily, when I got in this morning, The Degree Confluence Project was on my officemate's screen. This project seeks photographs from every integer latitude/longitude intersection on the planet. They have all but a few in the United States, Europe is pretty well covered, and they have other interesting spots including 0°, 0°. Amazing.

Plummeting... Plummeting... Reload.

I've had a hankering for a new PS2 game recently, and a few days ago ended up buying Tomb Raider: Angel of Darkness. I seem to remember that I enjoyed the first game on the PC in college, so I figured I'd give the latest installment a try.

I've only had a couple hours to play, and so am not very far in the game. It seems reasonably cool, but I've found several glaring errors that make me hesitant to put much time into it.

First, within ten minutes of starting, I hopped over a little fence (at Lara Croft's request, since I was still in the tutorial phase of the game), and found myself trapped in Collision Volume hell. Lara was walking endlessly against a fence and wouldn't respond to any movement controls; I ended up restarting.
Then, a few levels later (in the Parisian Ghetto), I found a doozy. The level is broken up into several zones, each loaded separately. There's no visual distinction between the zones--the game just fades to black when you hit certain spots in the streets, loads from disc, then comes back in the same spot. You can see past each load point before you hit it, which suggests that each zone has some of the geometry from the surrounding ones. That way, it feels like one big continuous level.
However, at least one of the load points is buggy. The polygon (or whatever it is) that triggers a zone change is not big enough. As you run down the street, approaching the load point, if you happen to wander through the deep doorway on the right, you can get completely around the trigger. This allows you to enter The Land Beyond the Load Point. In this land, everything seems normal at first, but after several yards you suddenly fall through the floor, and then plummet forever into the blue abyss. The best you can do is reload from your last save point.
As far as I can tell, The Land Beyond the Load Point contains a fair bit of geometry from the zone beyond (to achieve aforementioned seamless effect), but very little of the collision geometry. Reasonable enough, as long as you can never get there. But I did, and not by doing anything tricky--I was just walking around, exploring doorways.
Ugh. I wonder if I can expect the whole game to be this buggy.

Can dogs actually get scurvy?

I've been vaguely aware that a movie called Pirates of the Caribbean was coming out, and though I know I've seen trailers for it on TV, it never registered in my mind as the sort of thing I'd ever need to see. You know, the trailers were sifted out by my visual system along with the commercials for herpes medication and whatever variant of Mountain Dew they're trying to sell these days. (XTreme Bacon and Chives!)

Then, on Friday, I found out they were screening Pirates of the Caribbean at work, and that several of my friends were going. Never one to buck a trend, I followed along.

Turns out it's a fantastic movie. I'm not sure how well the plot would hold up otherwise, but Johnny Depp really carries the film as a ridiculous badass/moron of a pirate. I had a lot of fun. Highly recommended.