I don't know who The Beast is, but he seems pretty pissed off. I was pretty skeptical of the Michael Savage quote, so I googled it and got 45 hits. One of the hits was this.

The editors at the Taipei Times are also pretty pissed off.

***VIGILANTE JUSTICE, CHESS CLUB SYTLE***

So last night, Zakarius and his friend Justin were sitting at Salut Pizza, drinking a coke and waiting for their pizza to arrive. They noticed a guy on a scooter riding around in wide circles in the pedestrian mall that is Soho Street. They got suspicious, and kept an eye on the guy as they sat there and chatted. Sure enough, the guy rode behind Zak and snatched a young woman's purse hanging on her chair about two meters from Zak. Like a hairier and not quite so loquacious Spider-man, Zak jumped up, kung-fu'ed the guy off his scooter, jiu-jitsu'ed him into submission on the ground, then if you try to get up again I'm gonna crush your trachea'ed the thief to keep him there. The police were called, and Zak went and sat down. I showed up, surprised to see six policemen at a venue that hasn't seen such excitement since the Nick vs. the Pathological Liar bottle smash fest abut a year ago. I thought perhaps someone had finally called law enforcement to crack down on the ridiculous Bird's opening that Zak plays. I gathered the details from the witnesses, had a few beers, and started to retell the story to the newly arrived with a few minor improvements: "And then the guy shot Zak in the chest with a SHOTGUN! And Zak just laughed and bitchslapped him!"

Zak got to go spend about three hours at the police station to file the report. Chuck and I played some truly awful chess, and wondered about the possibility of a bunch of gangsters showing up to get revenge for their purse-snatching xiong di. Also pondered was the question: What is more embarrassing, getting your ass kicked by a chessplayer, or getting your ass kicked by a homosexual? Whatever the answer, we were pretty sure that getting your ass kicked by a homosexual chessplayer for stealing a purse is going to be pretty high up there in the rankings for personal humiliation.

In other news, Brett cracked three ribs playing football yesterday. I told y'all we were too old for that nonsense. But I guess that means I talk all the smack I want about that little queer Gonzo.

From BBC: U.S. Right Attacks SpongeBob Video

Focus on the Family and other groups say the video - a remake of the Sister Sledge hit, We Are Family - is a vehicle for pro-gay propaganda...
...
...The video also features children's favourites like Bob the Builder, along with characters from Sesame Street and The Muppet Show.

Immediate Queries:
-What is pro-gay propaganda?
-Who in the hell is Bob the Builder?
-Will Gonzo from the Muppet Show be in the video? He always seemed pretty gay.
-Will the Sesame Street characters be Ernie and Bert? Because they are not only gay, but at least 50% evil!

Also from the article:

But conservatives say it sees the video as a cunning attempt to promote homosexuality.

They point to the fact that the WAFF is linked to a pledge being promoted by some liberal groups which includes a recognition of tolerance of sexual identity.

"We see the video as an insidious means by which the organisation is manipulating and potentially brainwashing kids," Paul Batura, a spokesman for Focus on the Family, told the New York Times.

AHA! THERE is the pro-gay propaganda! Let's take a look:
(From the We Are Family Foundation site)

Tolerance is a personal decision that comes from a belief that every person is a treasure. I believe that America's diversity is its strength. I also recognize that ignorance, insensitivity and bigotry can turn that diversity into a source of prejudice and discrimination.

To help keep diversity a wellspring of strength and make America a better place for all, I pledge to have respect for people whose abilities, beliefs, culture, race, sexual identity or other characteristics are different from my own.

WOW! That's some pretty powerful propaganda! After reading that, I feel a strong urge to divorce my wife, take up pottery, and even start brushing my hair once in a while! I'd better stay away from SpongeBob Squarepants videos, lest the remaining vestiges of my ultra-masculine non-gayness break down!

Scandal!

Little do we know of the evil that resides in our village, or neighborhood, or perhaps across the chessboard. An Associate Professor at Chaoyang University of Technology evidently:

Cursed at the students!
Broke a door two years ago!
Hung a picture of himself on the door of the research room??? (I don't quite get that part)
Gave the students a big headache!
And showed PORNOGRAPHY to his students!
Here's the dirt (in Chinese only)

Now the porn thing kind of sparked my interest. Were there lesbians in the porn? So I bravely faced down this raging academic miscreant and demanded to know more of this pornographic material that he had foisted upon his poor students. The door-smashing fiend promptly wilted in the face of my towering... ness, and yielded to me the title of the salacious motion picture. It is Prospero's Books by Peter Greenaway.

Hmm. I have not seen the name 'Greenaway' come up in my perpetual pornography perusings. Nor does the title seem particularly fitting for a porn film, lacking as it does the words hot, wet, anal, and lesbian. However, if the Taiwan media says it is pornography, then it must be pornography. And I shall view this outrageous filth in order to better combat the King's gambit playing depravity that exists in our community.

Richard Hartzell is still at it. I'd dismiss this argument out of hand except that he uses the term "jus soli nationality", and I have no idea what jus soli means.


---------------------------Joke-------------------------------
A little rabbit is happily running through the forest when he stumbles upon a giraffe rolling a big fat joint. The rabbit looks at her and says, "Giraffe my friend, why do you do this? Come with me running through the forest, you'll see, you'll feel so much better!" The giraffe looks at him, looks at the joint, tosses it and goes off running with the rabbit.

Then they come across an elephant doing cutting lines of premium cocaine to snort, so the rabbit again says, "Elephant my friend, why do you do this? Think about your health. Come running with us through the pretty forest, you'll see, you'll feel so good!"

The elephant looks at them, looks at his razor, mirror and all, and then tosses them and starts running with the rabbit and giraffe.

The three animals then come across a lion about to shoot heroin... "Lion my friend, why do you do this? Think about your health! Come running with us through the sunny forest, you will feel so good!" The lion looks at him, puts down his needle, and starts to beat the shit out of the little rabbit.

As the giraffe and elephant watch in horror, they look at him and ask, "Lion, why did you do this? He was merely trying to help us all!"

The lion answers, "That little fucker makes me run around the forest like an idiot for hours every time he's on ecstasy!"

Somebody send me pictures from Kevin's wedding banquet that I can put up here. And did I miss any shenanigans of note at the post-reception at Brett's house?
==================================
The company Clarifying Technologies is advertising a robot that can climb walls. And celings. The warning bell on my Woo-dar started ringing, but if it is woo, it is heavily camouflaged. Maybe with that new digital urban camo that simulates reflection and shadow elements.
==================================
And let's all pour out some kaoliang for homeboy Zhao Ziyang.

For Squiggy Jahmal:

Note that John is talking about a full-sized grill with a cover, not the crappy little Hibachi things that pass for barbecue grills here in Taiwan.

Here is the recipe for turkey on a grill.

Light grill. You want to maintain about 320-350F for the roasting. Rinse turkey and dry. Stuff with quartered apples, onions and some celery. Save some to put in drip pan. Coat turkey with combo of oil, spices and vinegar if you like. Put on grill breast side up. After the first thirty minutes place turkey breast side down. Baste every 30 minutes . I used melted butter and cider vinegar. If your grill will allow it, place a drip pan below the turkey with the remaining apples,onions and celery. The dripping turkey and basting juices will make for some good pan gravy. If there is not room, place the turkey directly in the pan on the grill. It's ready when a meat thermometer stuck in the thick part of the thigh registers 165F or above. I will be glad to answer any specific questions you have about your particular situation.

JWL

I am tutoring Alishan Jim's son Tim in pre-algebra. The good news is that in spite of certain glaring lack of mental abilities on my part:

to beat Nick in chess,
to ascertain the location of the leak in the downstairs toilet,
to write coherently,

my Pre-Algebra skills are in good working order. And Tim himself is pretty bright. His problems in the class stem from the classic bad habits of doing too much of the problem solving in his head, and not writing down enough of the steps on paper.

We usually have about 15 minutes at the end of class, where we chat about various things. Halo and fighter jets are popular subjects, but since I don't know anything about fighter jets, he does all the talking and I just ask questions. I can sort of hold my own in the Halo conversation. Sort of.

The thing is, Tim asks an awful lot of questions. I answer them the best I can, but sometimes I have to say: "Let me get back to you on that one." And then I Google like crazy the next day. Here are some examples:

Tim: Why can't we get a spaceship to move at the speed of light if we add enough rocket boosters?
Me: Because the mass of the spaceship increases as your velocity approaches the speed of light.
Tim: So just add more boosters!
Me: Um.. You can't really add enough boosters.
Tim: Why not?

Tim: What is the difference between nuclear radiation and other radiation?
Me: Er...

Tim: With the technology we have now, it would take humans 200,000 years to reach the nearest star.
Me: It wouldn't take that long.
Tim: Really? How long would it take?

Tim: Why don't we use big rail guns to launch spaceships from the earth?

So, in an attempt to give a decent answer to the nearest star question, I set up an Excel file where I was going to show the distance of the nearest star in light years, then convert the light years to km, then divide by the speed in km of the fastest space object mankind has made. Then explain the time required for accelerating and deccelerating, and how that affects the final answer.

So, Google 'closest star'. It is Proxima Centauri, 4.2 light years. I thought it was Alpha Centauri? No, Alpha Centauri is the closest star system. Ok, got it. Google speed of light (I only know it in miles). Very cool, Google guys. 299792458 m/s. Right. Put that in Excel and convert to kilometers. No, wait a second. Google 'kilometers in light year', Oh sweet. Google 'fastest man made object'. Uh oh.
First result: Satellites and probes. 17.4 km/sec
Second result: Helios. 150,000 miles per hour (67 km/sec)
Third result: NASA's Voyager 1. 38,518 miles/hr (17.21 km/sec)

Add a tangential search that yielded Ion drives, and I'm not at all sure how to answer the question.

Yes, I used to play Dungeons and Dragons. This fact in no way diminishes my deserved reputation as a cool and rockin' guy.* So you can thus infer that I am very different from these guys. Boots of Escaping indeed. That's just stupid. He should have worn Eleven Boots of Speed.

And in Thursday's "damned if you do, damned if you don't" category- Scientists: Fossil Fuel Curbs May Speed Global Warming. Well that's just great.


*No really. It's true. In fact, I am rocking to Barry Manilow's Copa Cabana.mp3 as I type this. How cool this that?

Pinyin to Unicode converter. It sort of works. If you don't know what 'pinyin' is, don't bother clicking.

The Invasion of Taiwan:
A Chinese law would make it legal

but as the Argentine colonels reasoned in 1982, it's clearly easier to whip up national opinion over small islands like the Falklands ? or Taiwan, in China's case ? than to solve the country's problems

In response to Aaron's and SPQR's comments on the Bible story post below:

I spent many Sundays at the U.U. church in Tampa. It was a refreshing change from the fire and brimstone sermons that I had grown up with. I think U.U.'ers approach that a proposition of metaphysics must be treated differently than a proposition of logic or of empiricism is preferable, and in the final analysis more correct.

You know how in the game Civilization, Monotheism is an important civilization advance? I agree that it is as far as a culture's historical development goes. But there is another conceptual advance, in which a culture comes to understand that the 'truths' of religion have a very specialized (and limited) application. U.U.'ers have made that advance. Southern Baptists have not.

The Unitarians (before they merged with the Universalists in the 1800's) claim four U.S. presidents, so the portrayal of the church as a cult or a crackpot religion is inaccurate. That's not to say that there aren't crackpots in the U.U. church, but what faith is totally crackpot free?

The People Who Owned the Bible - a story

So the churches grumbled and paid Jimmy his tithe, except for the Mormons, Christian Scientists, Seventh Day Adventists, Quakers, and Unitarian Universalists. Jimmy said their teachings hurt the commercial value of his property and refused to let them use the Bible. All of those groups dissolved, except for the Unitarian Universalists, who didn't notice a change.

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. Hey, come on now. There are Christians in the U.U. churches. Maybe kind of hard to distinguish them from the Flower-Moon-Peace Children, but they're in there.

Lawyer: Iraqi Abuse Was Like Act of 'Cheerleaders'

Now, there might be some good arguments that the Abu Ghraib shenanigans under scrutiny in that case are not 'torture'. I usually think of torture as burnings and squished eyeballs and sulphuric acid and forced listenings of We Built this City by Starship. But there were some other beatings and whatnot that sounded pretty disturbing, so maybe the conventional definition of torture may apply. And at any rate, this Graner guy evidently had sex with Lynndie England, and that's some sick stuff.

But. Saying that making naked prisoners get into a pyramid is not torture because cheerleaders do it is going to lead to an obvious question: Just where are these pyramids of naked cheerleaders? Hmm? 'Cause I have searched in the darkest recesses of the internet, and I have YET to find pictures of naked cheerleader pyramids.

And the other charges- making men on leashes dress up in women's underwear? Is that any different from the kinds of things that went on at Brett's house while Kevin was living there?

This just in: Houston is America's fattest city. I bet they have great donuts in Houston. I'm not sure why New Orleans is only ranked 7th on the list. They've got the best food. And beignets. You know, beignets shouldn't be too hard to make. Just some kind of pastry thing covered in powdered sugar. I should open Taichung's version of Morning Call, and help Taichung move up on the list of the world's fattest cities. If there is such a list. I wonder how other countries fattest cities compare with Houston or New Orleans?

Johnny Atomic: My last E-mails to both you and Madmonky have bounced.

"... Deferred: Connection timed out with *****.*******.net.
Message could not be delivered for 5 days
Message will be deleted from queue"

Send me an E-mail with an alternate (i.e., Yahoo, Gmail) address where I can reach you.

Southernisms

Grandma (Who we all called Mema) was from Opp, Alabama, and Grandpa (Pa) was from Plant City, Florida. So I've been thinking about words and phrases that I used to hear (and sometimes say), that reflected this. Mema was the main source for these, mostly because Grandpa didn't talk much.

Most Americans will have heard of dungarees as jeans, fewer might know plum tuckered out to mean one is tired in the sleepy way. To traipse was to walk around or walk somewehere, but there was a perjorative connotation to the word that I cannot quite put my finger on. Tomatoes were 'maters. If you were about to do something, you were fixin' to do it. So if you were about to prepare the evening meal, you were fixin' to fix supper. If Pa was going to fixin' to tan yer hide, then you were going to get a severe whippin'.

None of these are too weird; I bet John knows all of these (he is from Texas, and Texans are sort of like Southerners). But there are a few that I have never heard anyone outside my family say:
Gom and mess- To play around and make a big mess out of something. Usually applied when I or my brothers had been into something in Mema's house.
Co-cola A coke.
Trot line For catching catfish. It seems everybody else calls this a "trout line", but neither pronounciation makes sense. There is not trotting involved, and it is not used for catching trout. I don't think. Don't actually know much about trout.

Something called the Edge asked a bunch of people this question:

What do you believe is true even though you cannot prove it?

Michael Shermer's answer is pretty cool, but so is Shermer himsef. Bruce Sterling's answer is lame. I think most of the people asked are academic types, because many of the answers seem overly prolix.

As for me, I believe (but cannot prove) that I will draw the two of spades on the last card, that my flush beats AJ's flush, and that switching from beer to whiskey at 1:00AM will somehow improve my luck.

Chaon, like Giblets, is unsatisfied. Chaon can still see his shoes this morning, which is a sure indication that the belly has been insufficiently gorged with donuts.

There are a few fundamental principles of donuting that Waili donuts seems to have missed out on.
-Glazed donuts. A donut shop without glazed donuts is like.. a walrus without a micrometer, or poker without cards, or something. I really gotta work on my similes. Anyway, they ain't got no glazed donuts.
-Jelly filled donuts. None. No blueberry, rasberry, or that day-glo yellow lemon stuff. No chocolate cream filled donuts either.
-Donut density. The actual cake part of the donut should be light and fluffy, to facilitate the eating of a dozen donuts in one sitting. Waili donuts are the right size, but they weigh about 40% too much. Even I cannot eat twelve of those donuts, and I can eat twelve McDonalds hamburgers as an appetizer to a pizza.
-Cops. What kind of donut shop doesn't have any policemen drinking coffee and feasting on sugary goodness? A FAUX donut shop. That's what kind.

Also, I stood in line for 15 minutes to buy these under-sweetened tori. Which is better than the three-hour wait being reported at Taipei's Mr. Donut, but is still 15 minutes I could have spent polishing my tusks or thinking about lesbians or something.

The top five reasons why my wife is the coolest:

5. She shops at Mango. This is cool because where women's clothes can cost up to a zillion dollars, stuff at Mango is always inexpensive. Buying clothes for my wife could only get cheaper if we went to the night market. Which I have of course suggested.
4. She doesn't divorce me for endlessly blabbering on about lesbians.
3. She bought me a suede leather Mongolian greatcoat in Mongolia. And she lets me wear it out, even though I look so studly and all these girls try to jump on me and stuff.
2. She brought pizza, beer, and a stripper to poker night on my birthday. Unless you are Pimp Ryan, in which case there was no stripper.

And the number one reason why my wife is the coolest is...

1. She found the Waili Donut Shop's website! The address is No. 899, Li Ming Rd., Sec. 2. I am going there just as soon as I finish typing this. I plan to be too fat by tomorrow morning to blog anything. Heck, if I don't shave for a few days I can soon look like a 6' 7" Michael Moore. Hmm. Maybe that greatcoat will hide the donut belly...

TURKEY
It was mentioned to me that I was remiss in not blogging a very noteworthy item after Christmas. A bunch of us had turkey Chistmas dinner at John's house. While this in itself is not exciting, the preparation of the turkey may be of some interest. The turkey was (baked? grilled? barbecued?) on a barbecue grill. When John told me he was going to cook the turkey this way, I was skeptical of a scrumptious outcome. Every time I have cooked a turkey (which is a total of one time), the white meat of the turkey was too dry. And speak not to me of basting. I basted that damn turkey like a volleyball at a football game, and it did not help one bit. So, it was a great surprise when we sliced the turkey to find that it was possibly the most tender, moistest white turkey meat I have ever eaten. John said something about turning the turkey upside down at some stage of the cooking, but I was already eating and didn't pay much attention.

TSUNAMI
Brett mentioned this on Saturday, and I found it this morning. Are you serious about contributing to the relief effort in Sri Lanka? Fly on over and help clean up. Cynthia priced tickets this morning, they are NT$22000 round trip Taipei-Colombo. The problem for Taiwaners is that it looks like the projects are two weeks long minimum. We can take the Lunar New Year holiday for one week, but that leaves another week of vacation time or unpaid leave or whatever. I have never heard of this group Global Crossroad, but there is no real reason why I should have heard of them.

OBJECTIVISTS
U.S. Should Not Help Tsunami Victims. Very nice. Somebody give me a quick reminder. Are Objectivists predominantly Democrats or Republicans? I can't quite remember. Though to be entirely fair, it looks like they are saying that only the U.S. Government should not help tsunami victims. So it's not like we should call them extremists or anything.