Incivil shopping

Thanksgiving id the unofficial start of the holiday shopping season in the US.

and some shops open earlier than usual, like 5 a.m. they also give away doorbusters, heavuly discounted attractive items to lure people in.

things didn't go as they hoped, in NY, though, where people looking for the best bargains did descend into fistcuffs...

how lame...

Inchoatus

I hoped to have found a serious source of indipendent sci-fi reviews. but not. these guy(s) don't weven know how to properly write in english, so how can they pretend to review other people's works? *sneers*

pity 'cause they do have some points to score.

The Dreaming Void

Peter F. Hamilton, the new space-opera idol of brit SF, has posted another update of his one-post-per-month blog.

He was afraid of having lost the usb-key where he stores his writing notes. Would it appear on eBay? or would the guy who found it be inspired by it, and write up a new Dreaming void and publish before him? we'll never know, since he's found it back...

it goes on detailing some bits about his work. Paula myo makes her reappearance, things of which, personally, I'm not particularly enthusiastic.

never liked her, and was hoping some new characters would find space in the old-age oppressed, asfittic(?) world of the Commonwealth.

BattleStar Galactica

I've seen Episode eight. I believe I've seen enough of the whole series, to draw my conclusions now.

and in essence they're negative. The original idea was good, with the sudden shock of almost total annihilation of Humankind, and the merciless hunt of the survivors by the cylons...

I could endure the little stupidities, and pretend that some things just didn't happen, fill in the plothole with my imaginations, the same way I pretend to mentally improve the environment where the characters play. I can imagine a properly built spaceship, and not something where the only difference with a nimitz-class air carrier is that doors are slopy... :-\

I did enjoy the humanity of the characters in the first series, and forgave the bad sides thinking that it would get better and better with time. But no, oh no, it's gone down the other way...

frankly, the only thing I'd save of the whole new series is the dogfighting scenes, but there's way too little of them to make up for the rest.

in this episode, just to stay on the detail, we see how the cylons are not only intelligent, and vicious, they seems to have a kind of supreme simulation power. How could they possibly know that BullDog would end up trying to kill the old Adama, when the reason for that (i.e. that adama itself shoot him up) was unknown to anybody but himself?) and even so, it's kind of a far fetched attempt at assassination, from an enemy that has shown that they could get rid of humanity once and for all, if only they wanted. I mean, they should have just nuked the humans while they were grounded on new caprica...

bah...

and the science in the series, purposed by Gaius baltar, is tacky and fake like, I don't know. just fake... unbelieveble. the guy is an idiot, and his only skill seem to be a mutant power who makes people around him think he's a genius, humans and cylons alike.

I much better like The 4400, where with some little exception like the mutation of episode 11/12, the science is treated a bit fairly, and even when it's not it's easy to see through it and just get along with the story... and most of all, they manage to keep me on the edge with just a good use of the story, and revelations, not with pointless space actions...

pity third season has ended, and I can't find ep 13 anywhere. but never mind...

tonight, it's Desperate housewives night. :-P

At the Confluence of Science and Technology

That's how I felt today, during a three hours meeting where all my colleagues presented their work... Pityt I can't tell you about all the things discussed.

Also, I understood that there's still a lot I have to learn before being on a par with them.

That's good. it's going to be two more interesting years...

Now, back to work...

How did whales came about?

Olduvai George tells us. with pictures!

thanks to Pharyngula

I am not a celebrity...

sigh...

may be I don't post enough. or may be I just don't post enough interesting things...

I don't know, but I'd rather live my life, than blog it...

yes, the fox and the sour grapes... :-|

(may be I'm more of an L-List blogger. L as in Looser :-)

weel, at least I do have sense of self-humour

World's largest democracy

that would be India... but this piece from the NY Times suggest otherwise, at least on some fronts...

lack of self-critics and extrajudicial killings are still common, and the idea that a wife is killed every 77 seconds by her hisband for failing to bring home sufficient dowry (dote?) is altogether repulsing to me.

still, it happens.

I hope things will get better, there and in china. If these two countries are going to rule the world, one day, we all better hope so...

who owns that land?

An interesting piece of the NY Times (again) about the portion of land which Israel illegally occupies in the west bank. Illegally since it's privately owned by Palestinians, and therefore, under international law, Israel should support their claims...

clic the title to read the article. you may need to register though. free as in beer, if you don't value your personal data...

How to waste our time...

Ah ah, I can't believe the frustrated guy(s) waiting the whole night for amazon to put up the Nintendo Wii for sale... and most of them didn't even catch one.

they thought they'd be smarter, and warmer than their geek-friends waiting in queues in front of 'real' stores... only they did have no idea on how long the virtual queue was. nor whether they were at the front of it, or at the back end...

For me, I'll wait for the Wii to come down in price after six months or more... I love Nintendo's games, but it's not as if I have plenty of time to play with them right now, do I?

and hey, does it play dvd/xvid/divx? anybody knows?

(from the NY Times)

Muton! Muton! Muton!!!

I keep receiving hits coming from a blog which I linked long time ago, when I foudn out about the Hyena's oddness...

I went back to the same, to discover that there's a new phallic-post*: the author just discovered a phallus impudicus in his garden. This is a particularly stinky mushroom with very strong resemblance to an erect penis, as the picture in his website can testify.

This mushroom also has other interesting aspects, such as its tremendous force when coming up from the ground. Apparently, it can break through tarmac, exerting a force of 1.33KN (that is, it can lift a person weighting 133Kg. next time you feel something pushing you from the floor, move aside... :-)

*: it's not that I'm particularly interested in phallic posts, mind you. It's just that the coincidence was quite surprising.

if you want some less phallic posts, just scroll the blog up and down :-)

it's not that I am busy...

Ok, I am, so I post less and less...

too much to do these days, frankly... new unforeseen tasks keep popping up at the last minute, and old deadlines are still there...

ouch...

hopefully, I'll be able to surf the net a lil bit so that I can post you some fancy thing... in the meantime, why don't you find your favorite gadget? http://www.paramountzone.com/

I like the cup warmer (it's looking for one that I found the website - too often I brew a tea cup and then I'm swamped by things to do, and when i can get bak to it, the mug is cold...)

and ten it's done...

a long weekend, two days sent writing, two other days spent resting, and the tenth chapter is finally done. good...

now, it's back to correcting and recorrecting the other chapters...

booring...

and I also have to go to work during a holiday day 'cause my damn calendar still plays funny and didn't show the holiday. so some people bokked me a meeting for this af'noon... pants...

I really want to get rid of all this... may be PAC's aspiration of living and working as a sea lamps guardian isn't too bad...

ciao...