Posted 4/19/2003 12:10:00 PM by Sid link


Tieing the Knot

Finally, I can be a hit with the ladies.

Link via The Eleven Day Empire

Posted 4/19/2003 11:21:00 AM by Katie Bug link


I Don't Get It

People continue to amaze me. There are many things in life that I don't understand, and stories like this fall into that category. Why would anybody (allegedly) kill their wife and unborn child? For the life of me, I cannot come up with one good reason. What happens to a person that causes him/her to see no other options but to take the life of the people that are supposed to care for? Leave them, abandon them, divorce them, but for the love of God, don't kill them. What processes occur to lead a person to see this as the only option? I don't get it and I'm not sure that I ever will.

I guess it will always remain a mystery to me, the same way I can't understand how people hurt their children. It seems to me that if they were to just look at their child, hurting him/her would not be a possibility. This is not to suggest that I can't be frustrated with my kids, but hurt them?? I don't think so. If this guy is found to be guilty then I wish we could whip his ass and dump him into the ocean. Instead he will probably get 3 square meals a day and be able to watch porn in his cell............at least until the day his ass takes that final walk into the "chamber." Sometimes life isn't fair, and I guess today is just one of those days.

Posted 4/19/2003 01:29:00 AM by Sid link


So Tasteless You'll Be Shaving Your Tongue

You know, I didn't think anyone else in the world would even remember Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner, let alone rewrite it for Lacy Peterson.

I'm jealous.

Posted 4/19/2003 12:59:00 AM by Sid link


The Book of Rachel

Another Rachel Corrie update at InContext, who links to a story with a lot of details that I've haven't seen anywhere else, such as the fact the ubiquitous bulldozer pictures were all taken hours before Corrie actually died.

Posted 4/19/2003 12:56:00 AM by Sid link


So Large It Collapsed Of Its Own Weight

The blogroll spontaneously shed 30 or so friends of Hraka sometime in the last week. I've restored most of the loss, but if you were there and are no longer, let me know.

Posted 4/19/2003 12:45:00 AM by Sid link


Probably Ar-Pharazon



To which race of Middle Earth do you belong?

Link via Hokiepundit

Posted 4/18/2003 02:02:00 PM by Sid link


The Rial World

I tipped George the barber 250 Iraqi dinars yesterday. He was pretty happy about it. I thought it was about ten cents in real money, but according to the currency calculators at oanda and xe.com, that banknote was worth over $840 US, so maybe there was more than simple gratitude for another addition to his collection behind his effusive thanks. I got it and two other Iraqi bills for five bucks at ebay, so no skin off my nose, I suppose. I'll let my seller argue with xe, if he desires. I suspect that anything with Saddam's picture on it is worthless in any monetary sense, no matter what the convertor programs say.

If you'd like to try your luck on the currency exchange market, feel free, there's still quite a bit of Saddam's money for sale, though the prices have gone up since Baghdad was occupied.

George first cut my hair when I was a freshman at Carolina, almost 20 years ago now. I've been back at irregular times ever since, when circumstances conspired to bring me to Chapel Hill for any length of time. Back then the walls were covered with foreign currency brought in by his customers, hundreds of banknotes under protective Plexiglass. There were three other barbers in the shop, but you still had to call ahead for an appointment.

He lost his wife a year or so ago, and the other barbers had dropped out or moved away over the years, so now there's just George and his banknotes. His kids still live in the area, and you still have have to call a day in advance for an appointment though, so he's not lonely. He disagrees with me one everything, from the war in Iraq to the Matt Doherty firing, but I don't do much arguing. Getting the dander up on the man with the scissors in his hand just doesn't seem sensible, somehow. I don't argue with taxi drivers for similar reasons. One word in the wrong place, and there you are, rideless on skid row, with the gangbangers and bums circling like sharks.

At night, the sewer weasels come.

I'd always wanted to leave my mark on George's wall, but the sheer number of notes already there was disheartening. Every time I thought something on the lines of "Eureka! Lesotho!", there was a 10 maloti note or its equivalent hanging off in some corner, taunting me.

Until last week, when I asked him if he had any Saddam money.

"Nah, can't get it. Arabs don't let their money out of the country."

That may have been true once, and even so bills from Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Egypt were already up in the shop. The availability of dinars, rials, and Syrian pounds available for sale on ebay would argue that even if there is an Arab banknote embargo, it's extremely porous, and likely to get even worse if Americans keep paying attention to the Middle East.

It would be an interesting exercise to see how closely the number of auctions on ebay of things like the Iraqi Most-Wanted Playing Cards and other Middle Eastern related items correlated to media coverage of events there. If such a correlation could be established, then people who bought in at the beginning of a particular news cycle could expect to make a certain amount of money before the pool of items relating to any particular news story reached a saturation point. Perhaps not a lot of money, depending on the item, but significant in terms of "mad money."

Case in point: I stopped selling the "First Iraq, Then France" bumper stickers a week ago, figuring that particular meme would face an inevitable downturn once the first part was complete. (If you still want one, however, I've still got a few.) When I first started selling them, there were only a couple of other items for sale in that particular category. Now there's dozens, though it doesn't look like many are still selling. The time to be in that market was a month ago, not now. I didn't make enough to retire on, but I was able to buy a new laptop, with a chunk left over.

The difficulty comes in first predicting which news story is going to have legs, then coming up with a product that exploits it enough to appeal to people. I got lucky once; God only knows if I'll be able to do so again. It's already to late to do anything with SARS, for instance. There's bound to be a way to come up with some sort of equation that could roughly predict which news stories will end up producing sales on ebay, but I don't know enough economic theory to even begin to come up with one.

Little help here?

Posted 4/18/2003 12:40:00 AM by Sid link


Fill In The Blanks

Long lines of ............. swept by the Exchange Hotel brandishing their .......... and uttering savage cheers, replied to by those of their own ......... who were trudging along under their loads of plunder, laughing and exulting over the prizes they had secured from the wreck of the stores, rather than rejoicing at the more precious prize of freedom which had been won for them.

Explication and a full quote available at Natalie's (permalink blogspotty, scroll down)

Posted 4/17/2003 10:00:00 PM by Sid link


Better Late Than Never

The 30th edition of the Carnival of the Vanities is at Billegible this week. Yes, It's a day late. That whole "spring forward, fall back" thing affects Bill a litle more harshly than it does the rest of us.

Upcoming Carnival stops include;

April 23th The Kitchen Cabinet
April 30th Clubbeaux
May 7th Common Sense and Wonder
May 14th The Inscrutable American
May 21st Cut On The Bias
May 28th Dean's World
June 4th Drumwaster's Rants
June 11th Overtaken by Events
June 18th Real Women Online
June 25th Single Southern Guy
July 2nd Amish Tech Support
July 9th Winds Of Change

If you'd like to host the Carnival, drop us a line. Information on how to join the Carnival can be found here.

Posted 4/17/2003 01:36:00 PM by Sid link


We Report, You Decide

Friend of Hraka Little Tiny Lies created the first graphic on April 7th. Randy Bish of the Pittsburgh Tribune Review published the second one two or three days later.


Is it an example of a meme that sprang forth fully formed in multiple places, or something more sinister? Steve didn't know, so he wrote the cartoonist and asked. The cartoonist didn't reply, but his wife did, and she wasn't in a polite mood.

Did I mention Steve is an intellectual property lawyer?

link via SayUncle

Posted 4/17/2003 01:31:00 PM by Sid link


Hey G.I.! Me Not Love You Long Time, Boom Boom!

Hallo fat America! Chew and smiling for flappy stomich fill with more Irak childs, phoney towerevenge. Statue fallens from Sadam, put Chucky Cheeze rastorant with cola in locate!

Why call Sirya proud man of charge the moran? For jealous? CLICK

Link via a small victory

Posted 4/17/2003 12:23:00 PM by Sid link


Our Fine Tri-Natured Friend

I love rewriting song lyrics. God help me, I do love it so. You have no idea how often I stop myself from posting nothing but rewritten songs. They flake off me like musical dandruff. Mostly it's fragments (just to extend the dandruff metaphor), something to distract Ngnat from a tantrum with. She finds the singing of new words to old tunes fascinating, though occasionally the practice backfires on me, as she'll demand a repeat of some ephemeral throwaway that I had scatted out a day or so before. I usually manage to come up with something at least close to what the original had been, and that satisfies her, or so I assume. She hasn't started correcting my delivery yet, at least. It's on the horizon. I did the same to my father at an age not too much older then she is now.

Her latest hit is "God is Great", sung to the tune of Chitty-Chitty Bang Bang, the soundtrack of which she has been playing incessantly since her aunts arrived to paint the house and taught her how to use the cd player as a side project. It's been my soundtrack for the war, an oddly fitting one in that it involves the overthrow of the undemocratic leader of an eastern nation by a mixed sex force of British and Americans* using their grit, determination, and advanced technology. Technology that the despot's country can't come up with on its own, and so tries to steal. There's even a children's prison. Really a very prophetic movie, when you think about it.

Probably ties Hal Lindsay up in knots every time he watches it. Perhaps he'll blog about it soon. < shudder >

I've sung God is Great at meals to more tunes than I care to think of, thanks to seven years as a Methodist camp counselor, though most of them were written by others. There's one to the Indiana Jones theme;

God is Gre-aat!, and God is good,
Let us thank him, for our fo-oo-ood
By his ha-ands, we all are fed,
So give us Lord, oh give us Lord, oh give us Lord
Our daily bread!

And one to some ersatz Happy Day's fifties thing, complete with finger-snapping. There's also a Doxology, sung to the tune of Chim chim cheree. It's scary how often Dick Van Dyke intrudes into my theology.

Up until Tuesday, Ngnat demanded "God is Chitty Bang Bang, Daddy!" every night for a week, the phrasing of which took me aback until I realized what she was saying. The inlaws were here Saturday, so that night's grace was a bit uncomfortable, but I made it through without too horrible a loss of face.

Here it is, for posterity and my future perusal once puberty rolls around and I need something to drive away the boys with, assuming that the various electronic places I have it stored don't all crap out at once.

Dear! God!

We are here to thank you.
We are here to thank you
For our food.

And! God!
If you could protect us
If you could protect us
that'd be good.

High! Low!
Every where we go,
From evil will you us defend?

Thanks God
You're a pretty good God
A fine tri-natured friend.

Thanks God
You're a pretty good God
Our fine tri-natured friend.

It's an odd hobby, but I'm not alone. The practice pops up all over. Case in point, Lynx Pherrett, who has rewritten the "Streets of Laredo" for Bashar al-Assad. I've always thought it a melancholy melody; it transfers to the Middle East locale pretty well.


*Yes, I realize that Dick van Dyke is supposed to be British. He doesn't even attempt to bother with an accent, so as far as I'm concerned, he's American. If you want to be Comic Book Guy anal and dispute that explanation, then I was talking about the nationalities of the cast. So there.

Posted 4/17/2003 08:19:00 AM by Katie Bug link


An Offer He Couldn't Refuse

For some reason this story regarding Marlon Brando seemed somewhat familiar to that of Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings, minus the settlement, of course.

Posted 4/17/2003 12:50:00 AM by Sid link


The Blog That Roared

If you're blogging in the King's English from Grand Fenwick or its equivalent, go tell Oscar. He's the blogger cartographer.

Posted 4/16/2003 04:25:00 PM by Sid link


Saddam's Favorite Artist

B. Durbin of Dex Lives thought she recognized the painting pictured in the Guardian story on Saddam's shag pag, thinking it was one of Boris or Julie Vallejo's.

Close, but no cigar, as we both found out after about 5 minutes googling. Saddam may well have been a Vallejo fan, but both of the pictures I've seen so far have been by Rowena, who did a cover for at least one book that I own, Clifford Simak's Project Pope. "Shadows out of Hell" is the name of the painting featured in the Guardian story. I haven't found a good copy of it, but here's the one from the Post.

King Dragon


Link goes to Rowena's online store

Update: Making Light has a personal history, albeit a brief one, with one of Saddam's Rowena paintings. Other paintings found in his shag-pad can be seen here, and it appears that some are works by artists other than Rowena.

Posted 4/16/2003 01:24:00 PM by Sid link


The Aesthetics of Evil

John Ray of Dissecting Leftism wonders why being a Nazi is considered to be so much worse than being a Communist. After all, both tend to promote sadistic butchers to positions of power, and both are responsible for the deaths of millions.

I think part of the reason for the American* attitude towards Nazism is the fact that for many Americans, World War II was much more up front and personal than the Cold War. Familiarity breeds contempt, as it were. But I think another reason is that when it comes down to it, Nazis are cooler and more attractive to the American persona, and so must be rejected all the more vehemently, unless one happens to be easily swayed gutter trash, of course, in which case one fervently embraces it.

If you doubt me, picture an SS officer. Now picture say, a Russian NKVD officer.

Which one sprang to mind more quickly? More importantly, which one is better looking?

Out of the big Three, Stalin, Hitler and Mao, only Hitler was an artist, and his aesthetic vision permeated the Third Reich. Communist Russia and China lasted long enough to develop a sense of pomp, but the way they came to power wasn't very conducive to aesthetics. It's hard to develop a fashion philosophy when you're busy fighting the Whites or the Kuomintang.

When it comes right down to it, Nazis are more appealing because they're prettier. Say you're in the movie business, and you have a script where the villain can be either a commie or a Nazi. Which image conveys more information the moment it appears on screen, without any extra action or dialog? The Nazi does, because when comes to information, the more beautiful a thing is, the more complex a thing is, and the more complex a thing is, the larger its carrying capacity for information is. A sonnet gives the reader more information than a haiku does. As far as media is concerned, this is a self-reinforcing cycle, in that the more often Nazis are used as villains, the more effective that image becomes as a symbolic shorthand for evil, so the more often it is used.

Communists aren't as iconic as Nazis, so the reaction to Communists or Communism tends to be more along the lines of "how gauche." rather than "how evil!"

* I won't speak for Europe; as far as I can tell the only contest between the two philosophies on that continent is not which is the more unattractive, but which is the more appealing.

Addendum: Saddam's aesthetics, such as they were.

Posted 4/16/2003 10:03:00 AM by Katie Bug link


Cha-Ching

On a personal note, today is a good day. It looks as though my summer school course will make, so my family may be able to eat this summer. Yippee!!! Bigwig, the Natural Lights are on me.........at least the first round.

Posted 4/16/2003 09:30:00 AM by Katie Bug link


Reassign the Troops

This story seems all too familiar. It is amazing that it happened at the same park where it happened last year, with the same team in town. At least this time a different guy was attacked, but perhaps we should assign some of our military to the White Sox's ballpark. It appears to be more dangerous than Baghdad right now.

Posted 4/16/2003 08:48:00 AM by Katie Bug link


All My Lesbians

I have written this down on paper so I can make sure I say it correctly when the time comes, feel free to copy it and use it yourself.

"No, honey, guys don't really enjoy seeing two women kiss. I'm equally appalled at the idea of All My Children showing the first lesbian kiss on a daytime soap opera. I am just suggesting we watch it for historical purposes..........maybe we should tape it and watch it a second time just to make sure we saw what we thought we saw."

Posted 4/15/2003 11:30:00 PM by Sid link


A North-Going Zax Meets A South-Going Zax.

The BBC - Congo Ebola 'under control'
The International Federation of the Red Cross has said an outbreak of Ebola fever in the north-west of Congo-Brazzaville appears to have been contained.

VOA - Congo Ebola Epidemic Not Slowing, says Red Cross
The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies says the Ebola epidemic in the northwestern Republic of Congo shows no signs of slowing.

Posted 4/15/2003 04:36:00 PM by Sid link


SARS Death Rates in Thailand Soar to 25%
A Completely Unfair Use of Numbers

If one were to plug the numbers from the chart below, which originally appeared at Yahoo but through the magic of stupidity will disappear in about a week, into a spreadsheet, one could calculate the SARS death rate in each country.



But one does not have to, because I did.

Malaysia----25.00%
Thailand----25.00%
Singapore----8.02%
Vietnam------7.35%
Hong Kong----4.55%
Canada-------4.53%
China---------4.46%

Everyone else - 0%

What conclusions can be drawn from the numbers? None that would carry any weight, though that won't stop me. It's just too tempting to point out that not only is Canada's vaunted health care system worse at preventing and curing SARS than that of the much-maligned U.S., it's also worse at saving patients than Communist China is. Not that Canada's healthcare workers aren't as dedicated, or don't make sacrifices. They do. But since the Canadian system isn't run by money, it suffers from a lack of it. A nursing shortage in the United States means that more people become nurses, because more demand for nurses means nurses get paid more. Eventually the shortage eases. In Canada, a shortage remains a shortage.

only 54 per cent of Ontario nurses have full-time jobs

The inevitable retort: "That's because the Canadian system isn't socialist enough!" which not only shows a touching faith in numbers as long as they are given out by the Communist party, but manages to ignore the United States' so far unblemished record altogether. Capitalist health care is altogether evil, after all, and it's okay to ignore evil numbers.

I have a friend, let's call him Comic Book Guy, as he has been convinced for years that Matt Groening based that character upon him. He'd met Matt in the comics milieu before the Simpsons premiered, so it's possible he's right, but that's neither here nor there. 10 or so years ago, Comic Book Guy was diagnosed with a brain tumor. At the time, he worked part-time at a comic book store, unsurprisingly enough, and so had neither money nor health insurance. The hospital operated on him anyway and gave him a bill for the entire amount, which he arranged to pay off at the princely sum of five dollars a month. Later on he became a computer programmer and paid off the whole amount, but for years he stuck a fiver in an envelope and mailed it off. That was his total monthly health care cost, under the horribly broken American system.

"Don't tell me you can't get health care," he said to pretty much anyone with a free moment or two.

And you can. You can get a ton of health care, as Comic Book Guy demonstrated, just on the promise of paying, or for a pittance. A permanent pittance, yes, if your circumstances don't change, but a pittance nonetheless. Despite the seemingly horrible private nature of the American health care system, when was the last time an American had to wait two years for treatment after a heart attack?

In the choice between immediate but relatively expensive, or indefinite but cheap, I know which one I'll take.

After all, it's only money.

Posted 4/15/2003 02:29:00 PM by Sid link


Ignoring You All Brings Positive Results

Dear Bigwig:*

The results of your RHCT Certification Exam are reported below. The RHCT Certification Exam allows candidates to qualify for the Red Hat Certified Technician (RHCT) certificate.


SECTION I: TROUBLESHOOTING
RHCT requirements: completion of compulsory items (50 points)

Compulsory troubleshooting score: 50.0

SECTION II: INSTALLATION AND CONFIGURATION
RHCT minimum requirements: 70 percent on RHCT components

Installation and Configuration score: 81.8%
RHCT Certification: PASS

Congratulations -- you are now certified as a Red Hat Certified Technician! Your RHCT Certificate number is #############.

Man, low B. That's the worst I've done on a test since I was a sophomore.

*No, they didn't call me Bigwig

Posted 4/15/2003 12:15:00 PM by Sid link


I Never Wonder To See Men Wicked, But I Often Wonder To See Them Not Ashamed. - Jonathan Swift

Original AOL rogue and Kansas fan Andrea Z with a word or two on the subject of family.

Update: Others also have words, on t-shirts.

Posted 4/15/2003 11:38:00 AM by Sid link


Sloppy Typing Strikes Again

Somebody got a bargain.

Posted 4/15/2003 10:38:00 AM by Katie Bug link


Where's Cheney?

Am I the only one who could easily forget that we even have a Vice President of the United States? Sure, we see Cheney about once every three weeks making statements about this or that, commenting on the President or the war, but what should we make of these? My suspicion is that we have taken a page out of Saddam's book and had Cheney videotape these messages earlier so we could play them at a later date to make the country and the world think he is still alive. I know he made comments about the war in Iraq, but what did he say that we couldn't have guessed earlier? The people are liberated, they are happy, we kicked their ass, blah, blah, blah. For all we know he is hooked up to life support in a D.C. area hospital right now trying to get his ticker to keep on keepin' on.

War news seems limited so these random thoughts are finding their way onto these pages for now.

Posted 4/15/2003 10:05:00 AM by Katie Bug link


Striking Clouds of Gas

Sure, Bigwig, Jawbreaker and I had striking clouds of gas on our fishing trip, but nobody wanted to take pictures of them. Admittedly, they weren't this cool.

Posted 4/15/2003 09:54:00 AM by Katie Bug link


Dumb Ass Reason to Kill

Why kick the habit when you can just kick the shit, or stab, others who try to get you to stop smoking?

Posted 4/14/2003 11:42:00 PM by Sid link


Bad Boys, Bad Boys, Whatcha Gonna Do?

Here's a sight to set Osama spinning in his graves. British MPs Corporal Gwen Hatton, Lance Corporal Tammy Wickett and Corporal Joe Richardson, on law and order duty in Al Amara, Iraq.


Photo via Yahoo

Might as well lay back, relax, and enjoy it, Wahabists. We'll be at this for a while.

Update: A link for those who have written in asking for more pics, as if I were some sort of clearinghouse for Girls with Guns photos.

Posted 4/14/2003 11:23:00 PM by Sid link


One Step Closer To The Abyss

Next stop for Monica after this? Celebrity Boxing! 3 rounds versus Anna Nichole! Winner take all!

In addition to hosting the show, Lewinsky offers dating advice in her role as Hayley's confidante.

Some upcoming tips include:

Each party in a relationship needs to respect the other, so never let him refer to you as "My little humidor."
A hummer in a Hummer is not nearly as cool as it sounds.
E-bay won't let you auction cum flakes, no matter whose they are.
You can make an independent counsel and his entire staff sweat like hogs just by eating bananas for lunch.
Writing "Ladybird was here" on the underside of desks with a sharpie is a great way to pass the time.
Writing "Hilary wasn't" is even better.
The term "milk it" can be applied to an amazing number of things.
No matter how much you need to know, most rabbis will refuse to answer when you ask them if sperm is kosher or not.
Neither will Google
They call it "Bobbing for Dollars" in Little Rock, and boy, does it ever work!

Posted 4/14/2003 05:02:00 PM by Sid link


Unmentionable Cuisine

The genetic sequence of the corona virus that causes SARS has been decoded by scientists at a Canadian lab, but it does not appear to be closely related to the three previously known groups of coronaviruses. The CDC has confirmed this*, calling the newly named Urbani strain "distinct from all previously recognized coronaviruses...", further stating that "sequence studies are not likely to identify a source for this novel coronavirus."

What the second quote basically says is that the CDC doesn't expect that finding the natural reservoir of the urbani coronavirus will be easy or straightforward. In the animal kingdom coronaviruses are found in cows, pigs, dogs, cats, rodents (rats and mice), humans and possibly rabbits.** Birds are the only other known source, with ducks, turkeys, and chickens all known to carry Coronaviridae viruses. The closely related genus of toroviruses is found in horses, where it causes diarrhea.*** Indeed, before the SARS coronavirus was sequenced, the most likely vector of transmission was considered to be along the lines of duck to pig to human.

Even before the results of the Canadian sequencing rendered the point moot, the hypothesis of a duck-pig-human infection route was in trouble, as the current earliest known case of SARS, the zero case, was a government administrator with little or no contact with domestic animals rather than the farm worker one would expect to find if SARS had been transmitted along that or a similar route. Of course, the urbani coronavirus could still have been transferred to a human host from an animal--via lunch, for instance.

Even if eating infected flesh was the original route of transmission, locating the virus reservoir doesn't become any easier for the epidemiologists looking for it. Chinese cuisine is known for its liberal use of whatever happens to be at hand, and the Cantonese style predominant in the province where the virus originated is considered an extreme example of that practice. Take locusts, for instance. People in Guangdong Province eat lots of locusts. People in Guangdong Province have a reputation

The People's Daily, China's ruling Communist Party organ, Tuesday criticized the Cantonese in southern Guangdong province, saying their propensity to eat anything was no mark of a civilized society.

"The big issue facing us is how to become a civilized people quickly with a fast developing economy," it said. "The saying 'Cantonese dare to eat anything' is no praise for the Cantonese."
"It is a warning for rare birds and animals not to go to Guangdong," the report said.

The Chinese joke that if an alien were captured in China, the Shanghainese would dissect for medical research, Beijingers would send it to the museum as an educational exhibit while the Cantonese would ask "which part of this creature can be braised in brown sauce?"

Speaking of locusts, insects could also be a vector, and though coronaviruses have not been found in the class Insecta, there's no reason to think they could not be. Coronavirus particles mature in a cellular structure known as the Golgi apparatus, which is just as much a part of an insectile cell as it is a human one.

At least one current SARS hypothesis takes the possibility of an insect transmission vector into account, as some Chinese health authorities believe that in addition to normal airborne transmission of SARS, cockroaches may have carried the SARS virus from room to room in a Hong Kong apartment building.

This is the point where the naturalists and amateur entomologists shout "A-HA!" and everybody else looks around and wonders what's gotten into the geeks.

Cockroaches and locusts are related, you see, both being members of the Insect order Orthoptera, along with grasshoppers, and if one can carry the virus, then the other likely can as well.

Cockroaches are certainly ubiquitous enough to be the original source of SARS, especially in urban environment, though their very ubiquity begs the question of why there wasn't a larger outbreak to begin with. They are also known carriers of other diseases, so efforts at avoiding or controlling them are just as ubiquitous. Locusts, on the other hand, are a food item, and there were a number of large locust hatches all over China in the months prior to the first SARS case in November. Some provinces even flew in ducks in an attempt to control them, on the theory that the ducks would eat the locusts, then the people would eat the ducks.

And ducks, as we all know, are filthy with coronaviruses. You are what you eat, as the aged cliche tells us.

Now, odds are against locusts, or even cockroaches for that matter, being the original host of the SARS coronavirus. The odds are against any organism in particular being the original host, yet we know that that despite the odds there must be a host out there somewhere, and since the structure of this particular coronavirus is new to science, it almost certainly comes from a source not previously considered. It wouldn't hurt to look for coronaviruses in locusts, especially considering the temporal and gustational proximities they occupy to the November SARS cases, if only to rule them out.

Notes from Zod

*Sadly, I was unable to find even one occurrence of "gattaca" in the Nucleotide sequence of the urbani coronavirus, though it does appear in the sequence for the coronavirus that causes Avian infectious bronchitis.

**Cheap Korean animations studios have started to lay off personnel as Bugs Bunny, Roger and Jessica Rabbit, Porky and Petunia Pig, Sylvester, Daffy Duck, Tom, Jerry, Mickey, Minnie, Donald, Daisy, Pluto, Foghorn Leghorn, Speedy Gonzales, Scooby Doo and Elsie the Cow have all gone into hiding. Scrappy Doo has been airdropped into Hong Kong, where he was last seen being sneezed on by Hong Kong Phooey. Sagwa and her family are missing and presumed delicious.

***There's a virgin market out there just waiting for a talented entrepreneur to exploit it.

Addendum: Because I am nothing if not anal, A Chinese locust recipe, from Unmentionable Cuisine, of course.

Fried Locust - Remove the wings, the small legs, and the distal portion of the hind legs. Pull off the head, withdrawing any attached viscera. Fry prepared locusts in sesame oil until they are crisp. Serve and eat like roasted nuts.

Posted 4/14/2003 09:44:00 AM by Katie Bug link


Disturbing Images

Most kids are a bit disgusted by the thought of their parents actually having sex with each other. It is just something we would rather ignore. This report of Saddam's "love shack" conjures up images equally as disturbing. I wonder how many times the phrase, "Whose your daddy?" was muttered in there?

Posted 4/14/2003 08:30:00 AM by Katie Bug link


Making Bigwig's Morning

I went to the QVC website (I'm not proud of it) to find a certain Bon Jovi item........um, er........for a friend, and ran across something funny. At least I think it will be funny to Bigwig. I typed in "Bon Jovi" and among a number of other things that popped up, the following appeared on my screen.

Horror Movies:

Bon Jovi-Live From London at Buy.com

Vampires-Los Muertos at Buy.com

While I'm sure it was mislabeled, I'm sure that I won't be able to convince Bigwig that a DVD of Bon Jovi in concert is NOT a horror movie.

Posted 4/13/2003 02:17:00 PM by Sid link


It's Sunday, So This Must Be A Parable

Certain Americans went down from Umm Qasr to Basra, and fell among Fedayeen, which stripped them of their raiment, and wounded them, and them captive, leaving their dead behind.

But a certain Samarratin, as he journeyed, came to where they were: and when he saw them, he had compassion on them,

And he found their comrades, who bound up their wounds, and brought him to Kuwait, and took care of them.

And there was much rejoicing in the land of their birth, and their parents wept, and all praised the good Samarratin, though they knew not his name, for he was truly a neighbor unto them that fell among thieves.

Posted 4/13/2003 01:37:00 PM by Sid link


A Eumycota For Fred



I found that lovely specimen under the house yesterday while putting up the bait cooler, where it will rest until the October trip. For some reason the Sainted Wife became apprehensive when I informed her I needed the digital camera to "take a picture of something I found under the house."

No idea what the family or species is. I've tried the automatic id at Agarics, but that kept insisting that what I have under the house is the Common Ink Cap, which looks nothing like the picture above. I think it might be the Red Staining, but I'll have to go back under the house to test that.

Though, come to think of it, telling the wife that I need a knife to go cut something up underneath the house is bound to make the trip worthwhile.

Posted 4/13/2003 12:09:00 AM by Sid link


Hungarian Youth Celebrate Imminent Return Of Oppressive Bureaucracy After Decade Of Scary, Confusing Liberty


Photo via Yahoo

Perhaps Janos Heider of Budapest expressed it best. "I'm tired. Hungary's new capitalist economy has worn me out. There were weeks in past year where I was at work for 8 hours a day for 4, sometimes 5 days in a row. I even missed lunch one day back in September. "

Janos stared bitterly into his coffee. "The hell with the Hungarian economic miracle. What I want is the French workers vacation miracle. That's why I voted for the EU"