Via the Pirate King, I learned about a Soviet-era Star Trek knock off named Cosmos Patrol.

Update: Thanks to an alert reader, I find that I've been hoaxed! There was no such TV program. More here. No wonder I had trouble finding any images to post from the show!

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BoingBoing had an interesting article today about Google's AdSense technology. I thought I would test it. Warning: boring autobiography in the extended entryfollows.

If you've followed my site for a while, you might know that I play an attorney in real life. Although I used to be a musician, I eventually had to grow up and "get a real job." Through a combination of decent grades and acing the LSAT (99th percentile, thank you very much), I made it into a top-10 (or top-25, depending on your poll) law school.

Funny thing, though: few Texas law firms wanted to hire anyone out of Georgetown in the early 90s unless they were in the top 10%, which I wasn't. When I got back to Texas - with a very pregnant wife and no job - I pretty much had to scratch and scrape for work. The first real job I got was as a staff attorney (read: underpaid associate attorney NOT on the "partner track") in a big insurance-defense firm doing asbestos litigation.

I lasted in that job exactly one year. During that period of time, I attended 80 or so depositions of plaintiffs asserting that their lung disease had nothing to do with their 2-pack-a-day smoking habit and everything to do with the brief exposure they had to my then-client's insulating cement during a few-year period in the 1960s.

I think there was only one legitimate claim among those 80 or so plaintiffs; a man with mesothelioma (a lung cancer which is caused pretty much only by asbestos exposure). Of course, my client was one of 25 or so defendants, so it was hard to tell what, if any, role my client's cement played in the poor guy's cancer. It costs too much to take the cases to trial, so we settled for nuisance amounts. I thought it was a complete waste of time and resources.

I took particular joy in John Kerry's loss, since the chairman of his Victory '04 committee was one of the name partners in that asbestos plaintiffs' mill.

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Via Target Centermass and Eric's Random Musings, a link to a verrrry cool video of the Israeli Merkava Mark 4 MBT in training action.

I wonder what Eric and Gunner (and any other former armor readers of mine) think of the Merkava. Is the Merkava 4 comparable to the M1A1/A2 tanks we have? Are there any MBTs that would have a fighting chance against ours?

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"Hot Fudge Sundae falls on a Tuesdae this week."

That's right folks. Rogue comets + wayward asteroids = this week's poll of cheesy SF cheesecake goodness.

First, the original 1970s disaster movie incarnation Meteor with the beautiful Natalie Wood portraying Russian translator Tatiana Nikolaevna Donskaya:

Next up, the disappointingly shallow Deep Impact with the quirky and cute Tea Leoni playing jerk reporter Jenny Lerner:

The truly rotten Armageddon had me rooting for the asteroid to obliterate everything. About the only redeeming feature of this movie was Liv Tyler's visage in her portrayal of Grace Stamper:

Last up is Asteroid, a made-for-TV also-ran, which I didn't manage to watch. The lovely Annabella Sciorra makes an appearance here as Dr. Lily McKee:

Disclaimer: Unlike previous polls, I couldn't find enough good pics of all contestants in character. So some of the pictures are merely contemporaneous with the movies, and not from the movies themselves. False, but accurate. (Good enough for CBS!)

Results (Posted 15 February 2005):

Natalie Wood in Meteor 13% (9 of 69 votes)
Tea Leoni in Deep Impact 35% (24 of 69 votes) -- WINNER!
Liv Tyler in Armageddon 30% (21 of 69 votes)
Annabella Sciorra in Asteroid 22% (15 of 69 votes)

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When I was a kid, wishing that the Space Shuttle would just take off already (this was circa 1980), I kept thinking to myself: "someday I'll make lots of money and then I'll be rich enough to build my own spaceship." Alas, that hasn't happened, but apparently other members of my generation thought the same thing.

Here's a nice article about one of those generational peers, Elon Musk, the CEO and CTO of SpaceX. Like Jeff Bezos, Musk is turning his dot.com riches into hardware and business plans to develop the final frontier.

While Bezos, Rutan, and others focus on the suborbital market, Musk has been looking at ways to make orbital access cheaper by an order of magnitude. Reading through the Fast Company article, it's fascinating to see how he is implementing an entrepreneurial, fast-growth company mentality in building space hardware.

You may have seen this quote elsewhere, but it's worth repeating: "Many times we've been asked: 'If you reduce the cost, don't you reduce reliability?' This is completely ridiculous. A Ferrari is a very expensive car. It is not reliable. But I would bet you 1,000-to-1 that if you bought a Honda Civic that that sucker will not break down in the first year of operation. You can have a cheap car that's reliable, and the same applies to rockets."

Of course the proof of the pudding will be in the tasting. And that tasting is scheduled to take place later this month, with the first scheduled launch of a Falcon I to take place.

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I know it's a stretch, but I'm trying to make tonight's cheesecake relevant to the Super Bowl winner.

It would have been relatively easy if Philadelphia had won, since I could have posted an F-15 Eagle. But no aircraft seems to have been nicknamed the "Patriot" so the link between the plane and team nicknames has to be more tenuous.

Here goes: the Patriots' home field is in Foxboro, Massachusetts. "Foxbat" is vaguely reminiscent of "Foxboro." Thus, as a tribute to an American football team named the Patriots, I give you a Soviet-era fighter, the MiG-25 Foxbat:

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Norman Geras has posted the results of his "greatest songs of rock 'n roll" poll.

Yours truly submitted a list of ten, and Norm was gracious enough to post a link back to me with his results.

Go check out his list, topped by "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction" by the Rolling Stones. I can't really argue that the top 10 belong there any more than mine did, although I have to say that my list attempted to identify "non-standard" standards.

Only 2 of mine even made his top "not-quite-100": #17 - A Day in the Life (Beatles) and #61, Nights in White Satin (Moody Blues).

Go check out the whole thing.

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Rob tagged me with this music meme several days ago, but I'm just now getting around to answering it:

Random Ten

Let's see -- first, open iTunes. Next, hit "shuffle" in the "Library" playlist. Hit Play. Write down song info. Hit Next. Repeat. Etc. Voila:

• Peter Gabriel, "Gethsemane," Passion: Music For The Last Temptation of Christ


• D Tent Boys, "Dig It" (Full Version), Holes [Soundtrack]


• Okui Masumi, "Shuffle," Devotion [Import]


• "O Little Town of Bethlehem" (Transferred to hard drive from vinyl Readers Digest's collection of Joyous Music For Christmas Time)


• Fear Factory with Gary Numan, "Cars," Obsolete


• Eagles, "Seven Bridges Road (Live)," Very Best of the Eagles


• AC/DC, "Hells Bells," Back in Black


• Bobby Vinton, "I Love How You Love Me," All-Time Greatest Hits


• Dire Straits, "Money For Nothing," Brothers in Arms


• Peter Gabriel, "Games Without Frontiers (Remix)," Steam [CD-single]

1. What is the total amount of music files on your computer?

Somewhere between 4 and 5 GBs at last count.

2. The last CD you bought is:

Presto, by Rush, about two weeks ago.

3. What is the song you last listened to before this message?

Led Zeppelin's Immigrant Song (on the radio on the drive home from work)

4. Five songs you often listen to or that mean a lot to you.

Rob broke the rules here by listing five nice classical pieces. None of them were really "songs." As you can tell from the random list above, my tastes are incredibly varied, so I've chosen five that mean a lot to me, and not all are "pop" songs:

• It Had to Be You, as performed by Harry Connick on When Harry Met Sally (the song I played when I proposed to my wife)


• Free Will, Rush, Hemispheres (A great statement of my philosophy and sense of life. Excerpt: "Each of us a cell of awareness, imperfect and incomplete. Genetic blends with uncertain ends, on a fortune hunt that's far too fleet...")


• Fanfare for the Common Man, Copland, as performed by Emerson, Lake, and Palmer (this is the song whose video inspired me to teach myself keyboards again in 1983).


• Battle Hymn of the Republic, Wilhousky arrangement (This song is as much fun to listen to as to sing. I am a multiple-generation Texan, but I never saw the charm of Dixie -- the Battle Hymn, on the other hand, has been a favorite of mine as long as I can remember).


• America The Beautiful (I've long thought this a more appropriate National Anthem than "O Say Can You See..." I like any version, but Ray Charles sure did a great one).

5. Who are you gonna pass this stick to (five persons and why)?

Nobody. I waited too long and many of the five I would forward this to have already done it. Please feel free to do it yourself, though, and trackback here.

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BoingBoing points to this excellent mashup of the Beatles' Paperback Writer and Neil Diamond's I'm A Believer (as performed by the Monkees).

The video and audio are virtually seamless, an inspired combo of a couple of treacly 60s pop songs.

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Ted (RocketJones) passes frighteningly well as a gap-toothed, cracker-ass, inbred, hillbilly hayseed of a redneck.

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1 Thanks muchly.

Posted by: Ted at February 04, 2005 06:00 AM (blNMI)

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Howard at 3leggeddog notes that Jamie Foxx actually got to jam with Ray Charles during the making of Ray. It made him wonder what his similar once-in-a-lifetime experience would be: Improv with Robin Williams.

Now he's asking what other people's would be, too.

I guess my once-in-a-lifetime experience would be very similar to the Jamie Foxx/Ray experience, except that I have always wanted to jam with Keith Emerson or Geddy Lee.

What would yours be? Trackback to Howard, or let him know in his comments.

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Steve Green blogged it so I didn't have to.

Check out the blow-by-blow here.

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Most self-respecting (and self-loathing?) Star Trek fans know that there were two different pilots for the original series. The first pilot, entitled The Cage, never aired on TV in its intended original form. NBC executives rejected it, deeming it "too cerebral."

During the course of this pilot, Captain Christopher Pike finds himself in a zoo cage on the desert planet Talos IV, where his captors are attempting to match him up with an ideal mate to repopulate the surface of their war-ravaged globe. That particular scene sets up this week's "Cage" match:

Yeoman J.M. Colt (portrayed by Laurel Goodwin) is a new member of Pike's crew. The Talosians describe her advantages to Pike as "...youth and strength, plus unusually -- strong -- female drives." I'm sure Kirk would approve:

Vina, (portrayed by Susan Oliver) is a woman disfigured in a shipwreck on Talos IV and cobbled together again by the Talosians. She was the bait in the trap set by the Talosians to attract Captain Pike and the Enterprise to their planet. Using their powerful skills of psychic illusion, they make her appear as a beautiful young woman:

Number One (portrayed by Majel Barrett, nee M. Leigh Hudec), is the Enterprise's First Officer. The Talosians describe her virtues to Pike: "The female you call Number One has the superior mind and would produce highly intelligent children. Although she seems to lack emotion, this is largely a pretense; she often has fantasies involving you..." Number One saves Pike from slavery (and, in the process, the Enterprise from destruction). A real woman before her time in SF:

As always, vote up to once a day in the main poll, and check out the Gallery for previous weekly poll winners.

COMING SOON: Runoffs among the 2004 weekly winners, so that we can name the 2004 SF Babe of the Year.

Results (posted 8 February 2005):

Yeoman Colt (Laurel Goodwin) 51% (44 of 86 votes) - WINNER!
Vina (Susan Oliver) 34% (29 of 86 votes)
Number One (Majel Barrett) 15% (13 of 86 votes)

Posted by: JohnL at 06:10 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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1 Looks like the Yoeman is all over the initial election returns >

Posted by: Lysander at February 02, 2005 10:36 AM (ShW/G)

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