Oh freddled gruntbuggly,
Thy micturations are to me
As plurdled gabbleblotchits
On a lurgid bee.

The movie is a bit of a disappointment after having read the HHGTTG several times, but on its own, is mostly harmless. (I’d give it a “C+”) The Vogons were well-portrayed. Mos Def is a natural for Ford Prefect, and Sam Rockwell makes Zaphod Beeblebrox seem hip and out of control.

A couple of weeks ago, a blog friend ranted on the evils of Splenda. He mentioned a web site that listed two references: one to a Sugar Association’s web site and another to Dr. Joseph Mercola. As I wrote here, the Sugar Association’s information is intentionally misleading. I wanted to better understand Dr. Mercola’s position and determine if he was any better qualified than the Sugar Association.

In his book, Mercola makes several assertions on dietary inputs that are appealing to the hippie in me, e.g. eat organic, less-processed stuff. He contradicts (current) conventional wisdom, which piqued my scientific and methodical side. However, I am deeply skeptical the only substantiation are anecdotes. Furthermore, several of his arguments use selective logical fallacies. It’s one thing to claim “X has never been proven safe,” but when one does not offer any third-party citations of studies indicating one’s own program has undergone any formal testing, my skepticism says this is another fad diet.

To be clear, I am not advocating we all start drinking beverages made with Splenda (Sucralose), Nutrasweet (Aspartame), Saccharin, cyclamates, High Fructose Corn Syrup, or sugar. What I am suggesting is we exhibit healthy skepticism at claims we read from all groups, specially when there may be a fiduciary responsibility to the a competitor. As I turned forty this year, I have witnessed at least two cycles of eggs being the wonder food, death food, wonder food, death food, wonder food.

What a charming book about … an ordinary life. It’s earthy, calling out random observations about funny, little things like:

• The strongest memory of a retiring co-worker was his plucking a half-eaten tuna sandwich out of the garbage can… six years ago.
• The nurse preparing to draw blood saying You’ve got great veins. As if that was a legitimate compliment
• Contesting a parking tocket on the grounds of good karma.
• How one’s birthday is preceded by a day of anticipation mixed with dread; the actual birthday has many phone calls and “Happy Birthday” renditions; the day after everyone is ‘half as nice’ (by contrast), then you have 362 or 363 regular days

There are pictures of phone numbers squeezed into a torn printout, anecdotes of her dry cleaner, and serendipity with her word-of-the-day calendar.

I enjoyed it.

It’s a cute book, done in the spirit of the various Worst Case Survival Guides. It even includes a calculator, as if a geek didn’t already own one (or could do math in their head).

I especially enjoyed the mention of Benford’s Law as a method of both scale and base invariance.

I had been expecting an overview, but this was waaaaaaay too much of an academic treatment of the topic. Much of the book was, literally, Greek to me.

The book is funny, though any writing advice is inadvertent.

In making a point that having one sentence on a page makes the pages read faster, the author incorrectly claims Bolivia’s chief export is tin. It is natural gas. :-)

So far, Molvania is a hilarious parody of the typical travel book. Some nuggets from the first section:

“[...]the electrical current is a rather unusual 37 volts, having been chosen using numerology charts.”

“Lutenblag and Svetranj are linked by one of the only cobblestone autobahns in all of Europe.”

Very enjoyable background music while working on NaNoWriMo for 2006. Thanks, K!

This year’s release benefits the Wilderness Society and includes the following tracks:

1) David Gray, “The One I Love”
2) Feist, “Mushaboom”
3) Gomez, “How We Operate”
4) LeRoy Bell, “Voodoo”
5) Mat Kearney, “Nothing Left to Lose”
6) KT Tunstall, “Black Horse and the Cherry Tree”
7) Rocco DeLuca, “Colorful”
8) Nickel Creek, “When In Rome”
9) Jamie Cullum, “London Skies”
10) Shawn Mullins, “Beautiful Wreck”
11) Death Cab for Cutie, “Soul Meets Body”
12) Brandi Carlile, “Someday Never Comes”
13) Guster, “One Man Wrecking Machine”
14) Train, “Cab”
15) Barenaked Ladies, “Easy”
16) Goo Goo Dolls, “Better Days”
17) Donavon Frankenreiter, “Move By Yourself”
18) Jackie Greene, “Farewell, So Long, Goodbye”

It’s a wonderful collection of performances. My three favorite: Gomez’ “How We Operate,” featured on Grey’s Anatomy soundtrack; Nickel Creek’s “When in Rome” and KT Tunstall “Black Horse and the Cherry Tree.” Woo-hoo.