Pilot uses quick thinking, language barrier to defeat hijacker

All I'd be doing is retelling the story as it's linked.  Check it out.

"Plan A" before Iraq envisioned as few as 5000 troops in Iraq by this time

Wow, now that's optimism.

Hey, if they really thought you'd need most of the active U.S. armed forces plus most of the reserves and huge chunks of national guard members plus thousands of contracted private people now, almost four years on, then I suppose they wouldn't have pushed us into this nightmare.

Vietnam looked like a walk in the park at first, too.

Despite the problems surrounding her death and the parentage of her five-month-old, Anna Nicole Smith won't really be remembered all that long.

In the end, she was just a Marilyn Monroe rip-off.  Her entire look and brand was based on Marilyn Monroe.  And things that are already in the mind aren't replaced by mere substitutes.

There'll be a few months of occasional news spots, and then what will there be to remember her by?  A few old pictures, a few interviews, a couple of reality shows no one will rerun.  Nothing of substance.  Marilyn Monroe didn't just have the look, she was also intelligent, and had a few films considered great, including "Some Like it Hot," which was ranked #1 comedy of all time by the AFI.*

It'll soon be goodbye for Anna Nicole.

* I like it, but it wouldn't be my #1.  "Young Frankenstein" takes that honor.  That was AFI's #13.

I really enjoy my Sirius Satellite Radio.

I have one I can remove from my car and put into a base in my house.  Because my job requires me to be in my car, mostly alone, for five hours, I listen to it more in my car.

I also listen online--like right now.

Believe me when I say that when you have five hours a night to work in a car, you figure out pretty fast what's available to listen to on the radio.  I immediately latched onto The Howard Stern Show.  Some bits are hits and some are misses, but the main people on the show are all excellent storytellers.  My favorite part of that show is when they spend an hour just chatting about what happened over the weekend or during last night's dinner.

Howard was the main reason I switched to Sirius.  Some other ones:

Sports.  Sirius has all the main team sports--NFL, NBA, NHL--except baseball, which is XM.  Of those, I only really do NFL, but hey, it's cool that the others are available.  NASCAR just switched over and is now only on Sirius.  They're even putting mikes on the radio signals for the top drivers, so during the race NASCAR fans can hear what the drivers and their pits are saying to each other.  Pretty cool idea.  Almost makes me wish I was a NASCAR fan.

Music.  Tons of channels.  Sirius music channels are no-commercials.  XM recently added some commercials to their music channels (ouch).  How cool is it to be able to drive from, say, Portland to Seattle and never have to change the channel if you like the music channel you're listening to?  Sirius just stole the official Frank Sinatra channel from XM, and will have shows featuring Nancy Sinatra among others.

Kids.  Howard is for when my son's not in the car.  But not all entertainment has to be kid-friendly.  When he is, there are channels for him, including Radio Disney and his favorite, Kids' Stuff.

Comedy.  Laugh Break is the family-friendly one.  Raw Dog is the R-rated one, and far superior in my opinion.  Also good:  Blue Collar Radio, which I would rate PG-13, and features "blue-collar" comedians.  In other words, you'll hear Jeff Foxworthy on there, but not Dennis Miller.  Jamie Foxx is adding a channel which will be partly comedy and partly talk/entertainment, which could be very cool.

Talk.  Business--CNBC and Bloomberg.  News--CNN, Fox, NPR.  Niche entertainment--Martha Stewart, Cosmo, OutQ, Shady 45, Playboy, Maxim, and more.  Wow.  There's even a "Sirius Stars" channel with shows by various names, which should be checked out by all subscribers for favorites, since it has everything from Richard Simmons talking fitness to Dee Snyder talking about the horror genre.

Sirius is like broadband internet.  Once you have it, you just don't want to go back to the old-fashioned kind.

Check it out.

My wife and I got an iPod Shuffle for Christmas.

The item has quickly morphed into "my wife's iPod."  She connected it to her computer, and has been downloading music from iTunes and collecting music from our CD collection ever since.

I must say, it's a slick little device.  About the size of a large coat button, the Shuffle is the smallest iPod, having no screen.  It simply plays, in random order, music you download to it.  It recharges while connected to your USB, so you recharge while you download/upload.  The Shuffle remembers the last songs played, so even though the order is random, if you want you can go back and replay songs you recently heard.

In fact, unless you want a way to play a specific song from your collection, there's really no need for a screen.  For most listeners, then, the Shuffle is fine.  The sound is great, and the few controls feel like there's some quality there.  I'm considering getting one for myself, but for now, I'll probably stick to my old, now-clunky-looking nex/IA mp3 player.

iTunes is interesting, too.  You download by the song, so you CAN get a whole album if you like, but in practice that rarely happens.

Some musicians have complained about this.  I can see their point--it cuts way down on the amount paid, and also prevents listeners from having the "deep cuts" in an album.  Imagine only getting "A Little Help from My Friends" and "Lovely Rita, Meter Maid" from Sgt. Pepper's.

On the other hand, I'm the kind of guy who likes very few songs well enough to want to own them.  90% of our CD collection was bought by my wife.  Yet there are a fair number of individual songs I would love to have.  That wasn't possible under the old way of doing things.  Sure, you could buy (for a short while) a cassette or CD single, but it was a pain to listen to.  Even later, when you could then rip the CD single to your computer then upload it to your mp3 or a CDR, I rarely if ever did.  First of all, the cost was about 1/3 of a whole album for 1/15th the music, so I really had to want the song.  In fact, there was usually a "B side" cut I had zero interest in.  Second of all, this option only really became viable for the last decade or so at most.

So there must be plenty of folks out there, like me, who ask their wives to get a few specific songs for them, which puts money in the pockets of artists who certainly never would have gotten a dime from me before.

All in all, I can see why the iPod has become a phenomenon, and, for the first time, I can say I'm an enthusiastic fan of an Apple product.

Man figures out "world's fastest" way to tie shoes

In this case, you end up with the same knot, but instead of forming the loops and then crossing them, you create them while pushing them past each other.

A bizarre little article, but worth checking out.

While on the subject of tying personal clothing, this is the knot I use whenever I'm wearing a necktie:  the Shelby knot.  I read about it in an old Wall Street Journal years ago, and have used it ever since.  Before I used whatever my father taught me, which I believe was a half-Windsor.

The link tells you how to tie the Shelby, but not what the benefits are:  the knot is small-to medium sized, perfectly symmetrical (most necktie knots are not quite symmetrical), and a nice triangular shape.  True, it feels a little weird at first starting with the tie "inside out," and the small end ends up facing "backward," but none of that is visible to those viewing you.  The main parts of the tie and knot are all facing correct-side-out. 

Next time you're wearing a necktie, give the Shelby knot a chance.

It was kind of an odd Super Bowl.  Some thoughts:

1)  The advertisers, by and large, avoided sex, presumably because of the whole Janet Jackson thing and the FCC still hanging over the event.  Instead, they turned to violence:  slapping, falling, crushing.  This is the same weird dichotomy you see with the U.S.'s movie ratings:  people can slash and mangle each other in the most graphic ways and get an R:  two married people can make love and it's almost certainly NC-17 or beyond.

2)  While the turnovers were exciting, after a while it kind of distracted from the game for me.  It took away from the professionalism of the thing.

3)  I saw it in HDTV.  I must say it's pretty impressive seeing a big event like that hi-def.  You figure you're just used to the graininess, and then suddenly your eyes are opened.

4)  I thought it was pretty cool that Prince was able to hold down the entire halftime show by himself.  Even the dancing marching band (there's some oddball name for it, but it escapes me) hardly distracted from him.  I've never liked his personality, but I've gotta admit, he held the crowd under less-than-ideal conditions.

I'm halfway through watching the movie version of "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy."

So far, I'm not too impressed.  If I wasn't a big, big fan of the book series, this certainly wouldn't make me one.  The dialogue isn't spoken very crisply, and as a result a lot of the jokes can't be understood unless you already know them.  Similarly, there are a lot of missed beats by the actors.

Some of the modern effects are fun, but frankly, without well-told jokes behind them, there isn't a lot of point.

Alan Rickman manages to pull out a halfway decent perfomance, and Zaphod is passable (played by a member of the "Galaxy Quest" movie), but the biggest roles of Ford, Arthur, and Trillian are all falling flat at this point, almost to the point of miscasting.

Still, I have half of it to go, and maybe it picks up some.

I've been busy, and haven't been updating.

Fortunately, this time it has nothing to do with being sick.  I just have had a lot going on at work, etc.

I'm fairly tired, but everything'll be okay in the end, I'm sure.

I feel normal again.  If only normal were better!

Ah well.  My sister's birthday is tomorrow, and she's doing really well.  She's now principal at the well-regarded private school she taught at in Tacoma.  It still sometimes feels weird that we don't live closer to each other.

I'm not sure what to talk about today.  I really don't have a thesis.  Nothing's really caught me on fire today.  I suppose I'm about done, then.