Wayne Gerdes gives Dennis Gaffney some info on his Hypermiling techniques to get less fuel consumption by driving consciously to avoid unnecessary fuel consumption. Unfortunately, it probably drives everyone else crazy as he doesn’t by any stretch of the imagination drive like a normal person and probably is illegal in quite a few areas.
It’s been in the news recently but Kurt Denke of Blue Jeans Cable (manufacturers of low cost cables for various audio/video interconnects) got a nice Cease and Desist letter from Monster Cable, claiming he was infringing Monster’s IP somehow. He decided to respond here with a rather nice letter that basically makes rather interesting comments given Kurt’s 19 years of experience in ligitation.
“It looks like when you sent this letter, you were operating on the premise that I am not smart enough to see through your deceptions or sophisticated enough to intelligently evaluate your claims; shame on you. You are required, as a matter of legal ethics, to display good faith and professional candor in your dealings with adverse parties, and you have fallen miserably short of your ethical responsibilities.”
Today as part of our discussions we were debating whether the audio/video hyperbole will reach levels of my own phrases like “Photon Free Optical Cable” or “Negatron Free Electrical Cable”, amusing in their own right…
Ever since I upgraded to the joys of cruise control in my car, I’ve noticed that most people actually don’t do the speed limit on the long 60 km/h stretches I traverse on the way to and from work. Regularly, I’ve been passed by cars doing at least 70 km/h, if not 75 km/h in these zones which makes you wonder if either my speedo or theirs is broken? Anyone else agree with the recent news articles that WA drivers get the most speeding tickets in Australia?
What’s with the Japanese, gore and high school girls? The latest gore-fest movie to hit from Japan is called “The Machine Girl” by Iguchi Noboru and starring Yashiro Mikase. The basic premise is Yakuza do the girl over (as their wont), and girl goes out for revenge with a machine gun ala Ash from Evil Dead (they like that sort of thing, if you’ve ever seen “Stacy: Attack of the Schoolgirl Zombies” you’d agree, I’m not making that up either).
Anyhow, obviously not meant to be taken seriously when trailer captions go “Yakuza. Ninja. Tempura. Sushi.” Watch for yourself from TwitchFilm.net here. Obviously, you have to be in the right mood to get into it.
Found this link on FriendlyAtheist.com by Hemant Mehta, How to Ruin a Trip to the Museum where Biblically Correct Museum Tours have their own view of things. Interesting things pop up like:
• Adam and Eve walked with dinosaurs in the Garden of Eden
• Tyrannosaurus Rex ate vegetables until evicted from the Garden of Eden (what, no coconuts?)
• Fossil exhibits are artwork, not science
• Evolution is a religion or philosophy
• Determining the age of fossils by measuring the age of the sandstone they are in is considered circular reasoning
• Ignore the exhibit on radiometric dating claiming “We can’t cover everything!”
Queried about the lack of dinosaur and human fossils being found together (which would prove the whole Garden of Eden issue) the comment is “Well, there are some problems for Creationalists…”
I’ve been keeping an eye on TwitchFilm which IMHO has the best coverage of films outside the US you can get to keep up to date with the new film with Jet Li and Jackie Chan called “The Forbidden Kingdom”. Hopefully it’ll work out OK but the made-for-US story elements usually bode badly but I’ll give it a chance. TwitchFilm has got a behind the scenes video of the film, so looks good so far. See it here.