I started bike commuting in the spring after not having been on my bike much since California. Today I passed the 1,000 mile mark on my way into work. I realize serious bikers do that in like a week and a half, but hey I just commute six miles each way so I am happy with it.
About halfway to work, probably right after I passed 1,000 miles, I realize I am not wearing my helmet. How did that happen? I admit to forgetting it a few times previously, but I always realized it within a mile. I blame the unseasonably warm weather - I didn't need my gloves or even my jacket.
So of course I assume I am now doomed because it would be ironic in that Alanis Morisette sort of way to pass 1,000 miles only to have a minor fall and die because I forgot my helmet this one time.
Fortunately I tempted fate and won this time and made it to work safely. Unfortunately I'll have that song stuck in my head the rest of the day.
"IT'S LIKE RAAAEEEAAAIN...."
It looks like the war on the War on Christmas has begun again with the usual misfire.
But it is an excuse to bring up my favorite quote from last year's version of this fabricated crisis:
CAVUTO: Is it more for Wal-Mart? Because they're everywhere; they're in China, they're in Hong Kong -- maybe they're wondering, well, you know, the percentages even change when you go global --
O'REILLY: They don't have to say "Merry Christmas" in China, OK? They can say whatever they say in China, "Happy Winter." All right? "We like pandas." Say whatever you want.
Once again, I call for everyone to adopt the phrase "We like pandas" for the holiday season. It is friendly, non-denominational, and seriously - who doesn't like pandas? [edit: snow leopards, you can stop emailing me now]
With all the creative people here I expect a rapid deployment of We Like Pandas holiday cards, carols, Vox themes (I'm looking at you tiff), tshirts, YouTube videos, animated gifs and so on.
Show us your pets.
Submitted by Prakash Daniel.
Just about everyone was using photos and emailing the pics to themselves. If you went to the Mail.app "Sent" box, you could watch the emails go out at the rate of about one email every four seconds.
My favorite overheard sales technique involved the employee asking the potential buyer if they had some sort of student ID. If they did, they said "Good news!" But the good news was never, "you can get this item you are looking at for even less money" but rather "you can now buy this even better item for the same amount of money!"
In previous posts (I'm now tagging all of these posts with heroes-historian), I gave a long list of parallels between the NBC television show Heroes and the novel The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova. Here are a few more.
First, no post from last week's episode because nothing jumped out at me. There was a nice Wargames moment however: in Heroes, Mohinder needs to guess his deceased father's computer password and figures out it is "Shanti", the name of his daughter who died at five years old. This echoes Wargames, where David eventually figures out the password to the backdoor account the (not really) deceased Professor Falken left on the WOPR computer is "JOSHUA", the name of his son who was killed at five years old.
On to this week's episode, which brought us six months into the past to see how some of the Heroes first discovered their powers. Here we learn how Sylar, the character who has been killing people by slicing their skulls open and freezing the bodies while removing (and presumably freezing) their brains got started on his little hobby. It turns out Sylar's power is somehow being able to read/understand the brain (his pre-murderous self had this focused on fixing watches), then use this knowledge to gain the power for himself. So, his first victim is a telekinetic, and after he kills him and takes a look at his brain, he is telekinetic. Presumably he also killed someone who could freeze things.
In The Historian, Dracula is fixated on collecting books and knowledge of the occult and other such things. As with Sylar, he focuses on things that will increase his power - military history, etc.
In Heroes, Sylar attempts to kill the cheerleader Claire. Now knowing that he gains the powers of those he kills and studies, had he been successful he would have been able to shrug off a lot of attacks/come back to life in the same way vampires in The Historian do.
All the jumping around in time Hiro does and this six month flashback both reflect the constant time-period jumping that is the core of The Historian.
Only one more episode before Heroes breaks until the new year (what, no Christmas Special?). I'm not sure what other parallels will surface, but I would bet on a beheading crossover, and it seems that Claire's dad's role and motives are up in the air at this point.
These kids are going to be mighty disappointed at the end of this ride.
And ready for transport
