Zapotec Woman Woman Performs Caesarean section on self: "If my baby was going to die, then I decided I would have to die, too. But if he was going to grow up, I was going to see him grow up, and I was going to be with my child. I thought that God would save both our lives."

I guess UNESCO hasn't made it to her particular neck of the woods yet, or else there would've been a "doctor" standing right there with a suction machine. Of course one never has to worry about this sort of thing in the allegedy first-world countries, like the UK, where no one with a cleft palate is safe.

Father Joe: The Man Who Saved My Soul

Just from reading the brief blurb on Amazon.com, it seems like this is exactly the sort of book which is needed. We'll see how it's reviewed in Crisis, however, before I spend my time and potential aggravation on it.

Unless of course you, gentle reader, have already read this book and can offer some praise for it.

Libertarian Party Presidential Candidate Michael Badnarik shows true clarirty of vision and the qualifications (har har) necessary to lead this country!

Abortion
Michael would like to begin by emphasizing the fact that this is a states rights issue, and should not be handled by the federal(national) government at all. He would also like to point out that at least half of the people who read this will not be happy with his answer, therefore it would be politically expedient to refuse to comment on it. He is very proud of the fact that he never makes any decisions solely because they are politically expedient. Please have the courtesy of reading his answer completely before jumping to any predetermined conclusions. Michael used to be "pro-choice" based on the presumption that a woman owns her own body. Neither government agents nor he has any authority to mandate what she does or does not do with her body. More recently Michael came to the logical conclusion that the baby must eventually claim ownership of ITS own body, as well. The abortion debate exists because of a disagreement about precisely when that happens. At this point in time, because there is no scientific consensus, Michael chooses to error in favor of the baby, and now holds that abortion is a violation of the baby's right to life. HOWEVER, Michael would NOT use government force to enforce this personal opinion, as some have chosen to assume. Michael does not claim to have the definitive answer to this perplexing problem, but most voters feel a need to know what a candidate's thought process is on many different subjects. This answer is merely an attempt to satisfy that need.

This, as well as his firm "position" on "gay" "marriages" also left me laughing and recalling the Onion article from a few years back where the Libertarian Party was holding their Convention in some guy's mom's basement.

Seriously, I'm no Libertarian, but I could eat the last few back issues of the Rothbard-Rockwell Report and crap a better Libertarian party plaform than Mr. Badnarik's.

YoHoHo! Puzzle Pirates! Something to check out when I have some free time.

And Gish, too, while I'm at it.

And since we're rounding out our cheap and independent PC game trifecta, Strange Adventures in Infinite Space, which looks like a version of "Starflight" that one can play in 20 minutes, which means it's right up my alley.

We watched a bit of the Memorial Day special on PBS: I had no idea that Charles Durning was part of the D-Day invasion at Omaha beach. Here's PBS' page on Charles Durning. It sounds like his D-Day landing, his first battle as a 17-year-old private, was just the beginning of his WWII experience:

Months later in Belgium, he was stabbed eight times by a German teenage soldier wielding a bayonet; Durning eventually bludgeoned him to death with a rock. He was released from the hospital in time to fight in the Battle of the Bulge, where he was taken prisoner. After escaping a subsequent massacre of the other prisoners, he was obliged by American forces to return to the scene and help identify bodies. Finally, a bullet in the chest a few months later ended his relentless tour of duty - and began four years of repeated hospitalizations for his physical and psychological injuries.

And now he plays the priest on Raymond. I don't think Fr. Bryce has ever included him in his Bad-@$$ tournament, but I think from now on, Charles Durning should definitely be included.

Thanks for all the great recommendations on board games, below. I remember hearing about Cheapass Games in the past (probably from former coworkers, after their return from Origins), but had never thought to check out their website. They seem to have some really great (and reasonably priced) offerings. Kill Doctor Lucky will definitely be on our list of games to get, as will the non-cheap-assed "Fluxx" (just as soon as we get an in-Fluxx of cash). I'll also check out Mille Bornes, as well.

A lot of this recent interest in board games has been brought on by my reading (1/3 of the way through at this point) Rules of Play: Game Design Fundamentals, a (text)book which I can recommend to anyone who might be interested in designing games (board games or digital games) or just gaining a deeper appreciation for them.

On an unrelated note: do you ever get the feeling sometimes that, unrelated to your competence or confidence in any one or several individual areas of your life, when it comes right down to it, you really just don't know what you're doing?

This is totally in line with the whole ontology of "Robot Love": Robots Protest in Madison, Wisconsin. (Link via POF).

Also, from this month's KVR-VST contest entries, the best cicada song ever: You(tm) - "Brood X".

A few months back Spike! the first network for men decided to drop a lot of their exploitive programming and started showing things I'd actually like to watch, namely episodes of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. I missed the first few weeks of their "Trek: Uncut" Fridays, where they show the two-part episodes back-to-back, but I have caught them the last three Fridays.

Last night they showed "Favor The Bold" and "Sacrifice of Angels", from near the beginning of season six (they're the episodes where Sisko and Co. retake Deep Space Nine. I think I appreciated these epiosdes even more now than when I first saw them seven years ago (and considering where I was seven years ago, that's not surprising). The acting was superb, the writing really quite witty, and the space battles were wicked awesome. Anyway, I got all nostalgic almost to the point of weepy for this show (I'm trying to remember what the penance was that the Prophets later demanded of Sisko -- I'm sure it wasn't his present state of being with them in the Celestial Temple -- there was something in-between), which has to have been the greatest show that will ever be on television, though I didn't realize it at the time. Hour-long dramas and science-fiction dramas in particular just seem to be getting worse and worse, so I doubt we'll ever see a show this good again. When one considers how bad "Andromeda" got (and how quickly it got that bad) this realization becomes particularly discouraging: Robert Hewitt Wolfe started Andromeda and ran it for the first two or three seasons and when he left Ira Steven Behr took over. Both of these guys were lead writers for DS9. If even they can't manage to turn out a great show...

Anyway, the Lord of the Rings triology has nothing on Deep Space Nine. If I had $700, first I'd pay for groceries, and then I'd pick up the seven seasons of DS9 on DVD. It sounds uber-geeky to say this, but that show was one of the constants through some very formative years of my life and is in some small way responsible for who I am today.

Lissajous Figures

Lissajous (pronounced LEE-suh-zhoo) figures were discovered by the French physicist Jules Antoine Lissajous. He would use sounds of different frequencies to vibrate a mirror. A beam of light reflected from the mirror would trace patterns which depended on the frequencies of the sounds. Lissajous' setup was similar to the apparatus which is used today to project laser light shows.

Pretty nifty illustration.

We finally saw "Lord of the Rings: Return of the King" today on DVD. It was a very good movie. The accurately-rendered trebuchets were my favorite part, of course, though the giant elephant AT-ATs were also neat (I was disappointed that Merry didn't grab a rope and run really fast around their legs to trip them and make them fall down, but I will get over it). I think the whole series should have been called "Samwise is Awesome", though, and then the third movie would have been called "Samwise is Awesome: He Hit Gollum with a Rock".

Jackie, of course, liked the (spoiler alert!) ghost army the best, especially the part where they all swarm over the elephant and bring it down in the background. I thought that was pretty cool, too, even while at the same time I was looking for the Black Cauldron they all came out of. I can see why you'd want to release those guys from their curse sooner rather than later.

Anyway, we've been holding off buying or even watching the extended versions of any of the movies until a) they're all available as one box set and b) we're retired and have the time to watch them and the money to buy a 54" widescreen plasma television to watch them on.

So why hasn't Victor been 'blogging?

All three of us have been laid up with a pretty nasty cold this week, in addition to working some pretty long days. I'm using the weekend to recuperate and should be back with some great stuff next week.

Anyway, here's some details about TMBG's next album, "The Spine", (which is looking to be a lot more rock-oriented than "Mink Car") as well as their tour. We're actually seeing them three days before the album comes out, which should be cool.

Speaking of albums, if you had to keep only three four "Weird" Al CDs and chuck the rest (not that I have to do this -- this is what we in the biz call a "thought experiment") which ones would you keep? I think I'd keep his self-titled debut, "Dare to be Stupid", "UHF", and "Running with Scissors". The rest I can take or leave.

ALSO, we're looking to get back into the fine couples' activity of board games. We're looking to purchase Cranium and possibly Spy Alley, but would be interested if anyone has any other games they like (which preferably aren't of the genres "If your spouse were faced with this particular ethical choice they would probably do...?" or "Which Ivan Reitman film was the highest-grossing movie of 1984?"). Some cool board games can be found at Ravensburger (would love to pick up "The Enchanted Forest") and Mayfair Games (would love to get some folks together for "The Settlers of Catan"). Seems like all the really cool board games are from Germany.

Map of Springfield, USA

Fairly accurate, from what I can tell.

Guilty Pleasure

I've been having some loads of fun this evening with the free SynthFont program. Basically you load in a MIDI file, your favorite SoundFonts, add any VST effects or instruments you want, and it'll render the audio for you.

Yeah, it's lame, but it kind of reminds me of my days with SIDPlayer on the Commodore-64 (yeah, I know, I should get a tracker, a copy of reFX's QuadraSID, and a MIDI file of Enya's Orinco Flow -- that was a perennial favorite among the SID crowd -- and spend the next two weeks locked up in my room).

Anyway, tons of free SoundFonts are at HammerSound.net (or just download the awesome GM soundset from FluidFonts and give SynthFont a little while to unpack the library into its full 145MB glory) and MIDI files are all over (though the free version of Superstition here is pretty good, as is the "Boogie On Reggae Woman" MIDI file on that same page). KVR-VST.com can point you towards oodles of free reverbs, compressors, and the like (or just grab the entire free "classic" line of effects from Kjaerhus Audio).

Now, go have fun.

If Eeyore were Secretary of State...

Almond Recall Epanded

Almonds affected by the recall will smell like cyanide.

I, for one, am not surprised.

Fr. Bryce talks to his State Senator (the Senator called him!) and gets him to change his mind.

This is amazing to everyone except those who read Fr. Bryce's weblog.

Judie Brown gets my vote!

From probably the site in most worst taste that I've seen in a while:

Amtrek: Northeast Corridor Improvement Project

Funny, but WRONG.

Terrifying.

But, on the other hand, what do you expect when parents make themselves into children and abandon all authority? In a word: that's so Canada.

Slate: The Best Prince Songs You Haven't Heard

Actually, I own all of these albums (except for Crystal Ball and the Live set, because I was poor when those came out). "Rainbow Children" isn't that great. "The Gold Experience" is all right, but it's really overthetop rockcheesy. "Emancipation" on the other hand, is probably one of my favorite Prince albums, and definitely his best of the last 10 years (wait... when did "Diamonds and Pearls" come out?).

I'd pick up "Musicology" but, well, poor again.