Encyclopedia Daniel

I know this is six years old, but I just found some parodies of the old Encyclopedia Brown books, using then-timely news as inspiration.

Here's how the first one, "Encyclopedia Brown and the Case of the Dead Child Beauty Queen", begins:

NO CRIME WENT UNSOLVED in the otherwise normal town of Idaville. Although everyone credited Chief Brown of the Idaville police for this incredible record, the truth was that his 10-year-old son, Encyclopedia, solved the toughest cases. Encyclopedia’s real name was Leroy, but everyone called him Encyclopedia because he knew everything. An encyclopedia is a series of books that contains all the facts in the entire world written from a Eurocentric perspective.

In the summertime, Encyclopedia ran a detective agency out of his garage with Sally Kimball, his junior partner. Sally was the prettiest girl in the fifth grade and the toughest, too. She was the only person who could stand up to Bugs Meany, the leader of the local gang, the Tigers. Sally’s parents worried that she might be a lesbian.

Always knew there was a reason I had a crush on Sally.

They're done by the Modern Humorist, i.e. those two dorky-looking guys who are always sitting next to each other on Best Week Ever making vaguely gay references to whatever's in celebrity news this week. Worth reading for any fan of the old E.B. books, or if you just like what you read above.

Depressing stuff

From this link, ostensibly a review for An Inconvenient Truth:

Maybe as a species we really have reached the same evolutionary dead end as Australopithecus robustus – intelligent enough as a species to create problems we're not bright enough, or adaptable enough, to solve. I don’t know. But if extinction, or a return to the dark ages, is indeed our fate – or our grandchildren’s fate, anyway – I think it will be a Hobson’s choice as to which cultural tendency will bear the largest share of the blame: the arrogant empiricism that has made human society into an instrument of technological progress instead of the other way around, the ignorant prejudices of the masses, who are happy to consume the material benefits of the Enlightenment but unwilling to assume intellectual responsibility for them, or the cynical nihilism of corporate and political elites who are willing to play upon the latter in order to perpetuate the former, which is, after all is said and done, their ultimate claim to power.

Read the whole thing -- it's depressing, but interesting.

In my dark nights when I can't sleep, I often worry that this thing we call liberal democracy has basically come to an end, that the inmates have run the asylum for too long (and not just since the Shrub came into office) and that we're all basically screwed. But we can't live our lives that way, and have to hope that somehow, in some way, that reasonable people can begin to make right those things in the world that irrationality and superstition have made wrong.

Not much else to say, honestly. If I were a praying man, I'd pray.

The Middle East

I can't say I have much of an opinion in terms of Mideast policy, except that the types of shit that territorialism mixed with a hyper-religiosity can cause are not exactly pleasant.

Beth sent me this link from the local news affiliate.

"The existance of Israel is a core issue to the end time events, prior to the second coming of the Lord," says Pastor Bob Somerville of the Covenant of Peace Church in Huntsville. Pastor Somerville is an evangelical Christian, and like many evangelicals, he's a strong supporter of Israel because of its place in biblical prophecy. He's sorry about the loss of life on both sides in this newest conflict in the middle east. So is the Pastor Emeritus of the Rock, David Nelson, still--"I guess I'm excited about knowing what is happening in the middle east is pointing to the coming of Jesus Christ, and it excites me about the coming of Jesus Christ," says Pastor Nelson.

Isn't it nice that Jesus needs such violence and death in his homeland before he can come back and smite all those heathens and infidels for not believing in his dad's book?

I need to move.

An actual beer post

I haven't been reviewing much lately, or even drinking a lot of good beer, mainly because I've been trying to save money, and reduce my chemical dependence on alcohol. (Not too bad -- I've been more dependent on caffeine than I've ever been on alcoholic beverages.) But Beth's taking a nap at the moment, so I took the opportunity on this Saturday afternoon to review both Kingfisher Premium Lager and Sierra Nevada Bigfoot Barleywine-Style Ale. The Bigfoot is fantastic, the Kingfisher... less so.

I'd forgotten how much I loved drinking and reviewing beers. The hop plant is actually in the same family as cannibis, which means that drinking very hoppy beers actually results in a very mild "high", and I must say that that effect combined with the alcohol makes for quite a happy Daniel. So I'm feeling pretty nice right now.

Olde Towne has finally released their Bock and Hefeweizen in bottles, as well. Good beers, especially the hefe, and I'm intending to make them my Fourth of July bottles.

One last thing, not beer related: I just saw this parody of the Batman origin story, and it's quite amusing.

Tomorrow, I'll put up my comments on the new Superman movie.

Errata

Another quick post today. It's about six, and I've been doing chemistry homework for about three hours. It's due at midnight, but there's only so much chemistry homework one man can do, I think. Tomorrow's the second exam for the class, and I'm nowhere near ready for it.

At least I managed to get the Bohr model calculations done (with my trusty friend Excel, of course ).

Biology's going well, although I think much of the class is feeling overwhelmed with plant and animal physiology at this point. Personally, I expected this class to be much more demanding, so I'm not complaining at having to be able to tell the difference between an angiosperm and a gymnosperm. We biology majors tend to have sex on the brain, anyway, so this stuff isn't really all that complicated.

I did have the Arrogant Bastard last night, as good as ever. Lined up for tonight will be something a bit more basic, maybe an Olde Towne Bock.

A week late

Damn. That's the longest between postings since I started blogging regularly again. Sorry about that, but life's been rather hectic lately, as classes have been swallowing pretty much all my free time, and I've had a slightly more active social life than usual lately.

Just finished making up a histogram for the final draft of my lab report, and I'm probably about to go home and grill up some chicken with some Arrogant Bastard Ale or some Rogue Chocolate Stout to go with it. Yum.

I've been cutting down on my drinking a bit lately, and blogging about beer makes me thirsty for it, which is part of the reason I haven't been talking a lot about beer. I know that I get a lot of searches for beer here, though, so hopefully I can find some happy medium.

(I've also got an Imperial Stout sitting in the fridge, but I'm using that as a celebratory beer for either getting this job I'm looking at, or finishing this semester with good grades.)

I've got another chemistry test on Wednesday, and I'm not prepared for it in the least. Hopefully I can master net ionic equations and oxidation numbers in the next thirty-six hours or so.

I've got a humorous and slightly disgusting post coming up, if I'm up to it after the exam and lab report and chemistry laboratory and... et cetera. Nobody ever said this was going to be easy....

Random Monday Stuff

According to statcounter, someone was googling "uah and biology lab" and ended up on one of my pages. He or she then continued to read through all my archives, from the first to the last. Since that's exactly what I do to any blog that I really enjoy, it looks like I've got my first fan -- welcome, whoever you are!

I ended up getting an 88 on my first Chemistry test, which I was afraid I failed, so I'm reasonably happy. Lucked out on the bonus question, though, in knowing that phosphoric acid is added to soda to help increase the solubility of caffeine. Definitely have to study more later on.

Beth is sick today, so I'm helping to take care of her. Looks like just a stomach bug.

Also, a nice link here from Adventures in Ethics and Science, about rampant sexism among Slashdot readers/editors. I can't read Slashdot lately (their new site design crashes Opera, and I've got enough stuff to do already without fiddling with settings or --gasp-- opening Firefox) but Dr. Stemwedel seems to have their number pretty well.

Given how tetchy people get if one even floats the possibility that some kind of sexism might be at the bottom of the underrepresentation of women in computer science and similar fields, it's striking how the very existence of outreach to women is tagged as sexist with only a wisp of common wisdom to bolster that tag.

But maybe the good folks at Slashdot are just hoping to spark a reasoned debate that might lead us all to re-examine our own assumptions on the matter. Yeah, that's probably it.

Hear, hear! That's one reason why Slashdot conversations can be so meaningless on any topic except development or hardware -- the sheer ignorance of most Slashdot posters is abysmal.

For Fans of Ebert

I'm just a sucker for Roger Ebert -- I've been reading virtually every word he's written online for the last eight years or so, so this link was right up my alley.

When you come across a movie that is rated at THREE & ONE-HALF stars, make a point to go see that movie. It will probably become one of your favorites and more than likely you'll actually buy the DVD someday. There's just something magical about the Threefie. I can't put my finger on it, but I would theorize that because Ebert isn't dealing in absolutes something extraordinary occurs...

I've definitely noticed this phenomenon -- the three-and-a-half-star movies from Ebert tend to be more likely to become quirky cult classics than four-stars, and tend to have a more "genre" feel than they might otherwise. For instance, Chasing Amy, Dogma, and Jersey Girl, all Kevin Smith films, got three-and-a-half stars from Ebert.

I have a long day of classes today, and will probably get my first Chemistry test back -- wish me luck.

An Algebra Lesson

For those of us who aren't really intuitive mathematical, here's a nice little blog post about why 0.999... really is equal to 1. Clear, concise, and completely convincing.

I was working on some Chemistry homework that I thought was due tomorrow, but it turns out it's not due until Wednesday. Which is good, because I haven't a clue in how to solve some of this shit.

I'm also trying out some online radio stations from the lab. Nice enough that I would really like to get high-speed internet so that I can play with it from home. I'm listening to a heavily-90's-alternative-infused Hypoxia Radio now. And since there's nothing better than nineties alternative, this must be one of the best radio stations in the universe... (Threw that one in there for Beth, who has little patience for depressing nineties alternative.)

Addendum to the Last Post

P-Zed has a full-on response to the same article I wrote my last post about. Except he's way better at it than I am.

Sorry posting has been spotty, but I've been quite busy lately. I'm also trying to cut back on the drinking, so my beer reviews have been lacking.