How long ...

... before this becomes a consumer item from Honda or Polaris?

Except for the two-stroke engine noise, I'd drive one of these to work.

Don't pet the tiger

One of my colleagues is fond of that phrase, with reference to asking the executives anything, for fear of getting an answer. However, a film maker in Singapore seems to have learned a much harder lesson, by petting the tiger of the Indonesian Government.

A film about pretty boys on the beaches at Bali, making a tenuous living by having flings with women tourists, has started a pogrom against "tanned, muscular" guys. Have a look at the article; I especially liked the note near the end about how Bali has more than just gigolos to offer; they have "...Hindu temples, volcanoes, and terraced rice fields..." too!

Truly Nuts

I don't think I can say anything at all about this that the article doesn't already say. Strongly recommended reading.

Oh, come on ...

... it's just a typo. Would you do the publishing equivalent of a recall if you'd slipped up and spelled "pepper" as "people?" Would you if the publication in question was a cook book and the phrase in question was "... freshly ground black people?" This in a book called the Pasta Bible. (First published in 1642, in Florence, by Geraldus Irresponsibilus, a monk who later reigned briefly as Pope Noninnocenza the Third, and who specialized in variant readings of holy scripture, including the infamous Wicked Bible, which left the word "not" out of the admonition "thou shalt not commit adultery (true: look it up);" the Silly Bible, which included a thirteenth commandment, "Thou shalt not fling gnocchi at thy mother's brother's concubine;" and the bible d'accent indigne, which although based on English, renders everything in a spurious French accent.)

Apparently, the Pasta Bible's publisher is adopting the Toyota approach to public relations: "... if anyone is small-minded enough to complain about this ... "

Not ready for prime time

Or any other time:

North Korean Comedy! And now, Live from Pyongyang, it's Saturday Night!

Diversity, diversity ...

Here in Michigan, we have the full range of human experience, and our state's parenting skills are a good example. Last week's news carried two stories, demonstrating the scope of our population's abilities in child care-giving.

First: bad parent! A dad and an uncle spent two days driving around, drinking, bowling, and generally partying, with Dad's two young children in the car, frequently locked in the car, out in a variety of parking lots. Mom says she's "as shocked as anybody."

Next: good parent! A man (whose identity is not yet known) took his child to work, presumably to teach the 7-year-old valuable career skills. True, Dad's work was holding up retail establishments, child in tow, but still ...

Midwest family values, folks.

From my upcoming book

The classic dog cooking of the Middle West, everybody's favorite, Pizza Dogherita, with its beautiful bands of golden canned pumpkin and bright red tomato gunk representing the German (shepherd) flag, is traditionally served on a bed of 'large bites' dry food, topped with a dollop of Inova wet food and a doggie benadryl. Bon appetito!

A10 goes green

The Prius of the skies? How green can a ground-attack aircraft really be? Whatever, it's nice to see anything going on that preserves the useful life of these aging but successful flying tanks.

Try this at home

This weekend, I made a batch of cotechino, a sweet, mild Italian pork sausage that the Earle used to serve in puff pastry as Cotechino in Crosta. I've been meaning to try my hand at it for a while, but only recently assembled the ingredients. So ... fine, I've got some sausage to serve. What I really wanted to go with it was an earthy starch dish, redolent of damp, early-Spring woods and gradually resurgent nature. It's not all that often that I suit myself quite as successfully as I did with this three-P risotto - Porcini, Parmesan, and Peas. Drank a 2005 Barbaresco with it and marveled at my ability to very occasionally achieve what I set out to do.

Told you so

The study that sparked a wave of concern about a link between vaccination and autism, led to many parents failing to have their children vaccinated, and produced a resurgance of measles, among other childhood diseases, was retracted by the journal that published it. Not that it will change the minds of the many, many ignorant people who bought into the idea ... but at least there'll be formal consequences for the jackass who perpetrated it.

And even more pleasing to my sceptical mind, a large group of homeopathy-deniers took a "massive overdose" of various highly-diluted homeopathic "remedies," including some containing (or aledged to contain) toxins. None of them died or even felt bad.

New Scientist reports: No ill effects were reported by hundreds of volunteers who took part in a mass-overdose stunt around the world to demonstrate that homeopathic remedies are nothing more than sugar pills.

"There were no casualties at all, as far as I know," says Martin Robbins, spokesman for the "10:23" campaign, created to highlight the alleged ineffectiveness of homeopathic remedies.

"No one was cured of anything either," says Robbins. Like an estimated 300 volunteers in several cities in the UK, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the US, he swallowed a bottleful of around 80 homeopathic "pillules" at exactly 10.23 am on Saturday. Each pillule is a tiny sugar pill dabbed with a drop of a homeopathic remedy, produced through "infinite" dilution – the process whereby a solution is diluted to the point where no molecules of an active component are likely to remain.

Remarkably, promoting and selling homeopathic remedies is not illegal here or in the UK, no more so than similar activities related to traditional Chinese medicine, hedge funds, or chiropractic.