Yulia Tymoshenko is the prime minister of The Ukraine. And, frankly, I think she’s kind of hot, especially with all this “Sarah Palin: Hot or Not” talking going on:
Unexpected Hotties: Yulia Tymoshenko
Life On Mars debuts tonight!
Holy crap! I almost forgot to remind you guys: the series premiere of Life On Mars is tonight at 10pm eastern on ABC. I can’t speak for the new American version, but the British original was one of my all-time favorite TV shows… ever! So set that TiVo and check it out!
Mad Men: “The Inheritance”
This episode kicks off with Pete reading a list of companies that will have a presence at an aerospace convention in Los Angeles. Sterling Cooper will have a presence there, too. Don says that “every engineer, scientist, and general will be there trying to figure out how to put a man on the moon… or blow up Moscow, whichever one costs more.” Don appoints Pete to be the Talker and Paul to be the Listener. They are not only to look for “traditional” advertising business, but also to look for Congressmen trying to get funding for projects. Sterling Cooper will gladly help members of Congress in “selling” their plans to the public. Awesome. He then blasts Paul and Pete for not reading the material that Peggy had put together. “Maybe I should send her”, Don laments.
Later that night, Trudy begs Pete to take her to Los Angeles with him. Pete declines, to which Trudy says that she will go to her parent’s home in Rehoboth (Delaware?) while he is away. Pete asks why, and Trudy says that her parents are concerned… thus, bringing up the whole “baby thing” again. If I were Pete, I guess I’d be ticked off, too. I mean, sure… Trudy is pretty hot, in an “Emmy Rossum is hot” kind of way… but the constant nagging about having a baby would drive me crazy too! Trudy brings up adoption, while Pete decries as “unnatural”.
At around the same time, Betty calls Don at his hotel. Betty’s father has had a stroke. He’s “up and around and talking”, but Betty’s relatives refused to put him on the phone. Don says that he’ll come get her that moment. Betty refuses, saying that she doesn’t want to wake the kids. Don says that everything will be OK, and that he’ll pick her up at 8am the next morning.
The next morning, the Drapers arrive at her father’s house a few minutes ahead of her brother William. Betty’s father Gene initially recognizes Betty and Don. In fact, he seems almost completely normal. That is, until Betty mentions that they should have called her (Betty) earlier, as Don knows some great doctors in New York. This causes William to roll his eyes and talk about “oh yes, the great doctors in New York, where everything’s better”. It also causes Gene to mistake Betty for Ruthie, his deceased wife (and Betty’s mother). Betty then asks Gene what the doctors said, to which her dad says “ah, it’s just like last time”. Betty, who had no idea that he’d had one before, freaks. Gene tells her that it’s just “a couple of little strokes” and that it’s not a big deal.
“The Dude” Wallpaper
I got this picture from 4chan the other day. I then spent 12 seconds in Photoshop resizing it for my widescreen monitor. I hope you enjoy it – I know fans of The Big Lebowski will love it!
Jim Cofer: Now on Facebook
I was talking to my friend Holly last week when she mentioned that she’s on Facebook.
I have always been on MySpace, mainly because that’s what all my Charlotte friends use. Honestly, I don’t care about either that much, since this site is what occupies my time. Sure, I have a MySpace page, but I usually spend around 10 minutes a week on MySpace.
However, I did think it was kind of bizarre that I didn’t have any sort of presence on Facebook, so as of this past Saturday night, I am a member of Facebook! I only posted this now because my profile was empty for the first couple of days. Earlier this week I cut and pasted all my MySpace profile stuff into my Facebook one, so now there’s actually stuff there worth seeing.
My profile is here.
Hit me up sometime, peeps!
The Riches: Canceled
The Riches, FX’s dark comedy starring Eddie Izzard and Minnie Driver as grifters who assume the identity of a rich family after being involved in their accidental deaths, has been canceled.
This news is not completely surprising. The show never pulled in the numbers FX wanted, especially given the show’s hefty price tag. Although I’ll miss the show, I’m not too broken up about it: there are far too many other great shows on TV these days.
Slimming Down iTunes
Many Windows users hate Apple’s iTunes with a passion. Windows users come from a world of choice, where there are dozens of media players out there, and it’s easy to choose which one you prefer. Don’t like Windows Media Player? Use WinAMP, foobar, RealJukebox, MusicMatch, or whatever floats your boat. Windows users are also used to having options available. Most Windows users I know prefer having complete control over an install. We get pissed when a program installs something without our approval. And iTunes is really guilty of doing just this.
iTunes used to be software that you used to rip and play CDs, buy songs from iTMS, and transfer music to your iPod. Now, however, Apple thinks you want to do everything with your Apple product, especially the touchscreen devices. Whether you want it to or not, iTunes installs lots of software on your system that not only is pointless for many users, it even leaves possible security holes open and unnecessary services running!
To slim down an installation of iTunes, download the latest full installer from Apple (as of this writing, that would be iTunes801Setup.exe). Unzip the installer using WinZIP, WinRAR or your favorite compression program. Inside the unzipped folder, you will see the following files:
iTunes.msi
Quick Time.msi
AppleSoftwareUpdate.msi
AppleMobileDeviceSupport.msi
Bonjour.msi
MobileMe.msi
Setupadmin.exe
Note: for 64-bit versions of iTunes, most of the above programs have “64” appended to their names, such as “iTunes64.msi”.
Here’s what each one does:
The Smoot, Defined
You’ve heard of feet and meters… but have you ever heard of the Smoot?
Back in 1958, Oliver Smoot began attending the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He was also pledging for the Lambda Chi Alpha fraternity. At 5′ 7″, Smoot was the shortest pledge by far, so his future frat brothers came up with a personalized initiation for him: they took him to the Massachusetts Avenue Bridge and used his body to measure the length of the bridge, with an exhausted Smoot standing up and lying down every time the frat members marked off another “Smoot”. The bridge was eventually found to be 364.4 Smoots long.
The prank became something of a local legend in the Boston area. In the years following the prank, whenever the city of Boston painted over the “Smoot Markers”, the fraternity members would surreptitiously sneak back onto the bridge and paint them back. After a few years of back and forth between the city and the fraternity, the city of Boston eventually gave up and announced that they would no longer paint over the markers. In the past few years, the city has even warmed up to the markers by providing an off-duty motorcycle officer to warn traffic as the fraternity members repaint the markers. I believe that the city even uses “Smoots” as their official measurement of the bridge!
Over the years, Smoots have taken off as something of a “geek joke”. You can even convert between feet and Smoots with Google calculator: open a Google window and type “8.5 feet in Smoots” into the search box. On the next page, Google will have your answer (1.52238806 Smoots).
Smoot eventually became chairman of the American National Standards Institute, was in the news lately because of Smoot Celebration Day at MIT, where he received a plaque which will be installed on the bridge later this year.
How the Cutty Sark Burned
Clipper ships were the “race cars” of sailing ships. The short and narrow ships were sometimes called “Yankee clippers” due to their development on the east coast of the United States in the early part of the 19th century. Clippers were the ship of choice for low-volume, high-value cargoes. If you needed travel from Baltimore to Buenos Aires as quickly as possible, or you needed to send a cargo of spices from Bombay to London in weeks not months, clipper ships were the way to go. The very first clipper ship, the Annie McKim, was built in Baltimore in 1833, and by 1854 clipper ships were routinely breaking speed records. In that year, the clipper ship Sovereign of the Seas traveled at a sustained speed of 22 knots (25 mph), the fastest speed ever recorded for a sailing vessel.
One of the most famous of all the clipper ships was Cutty Sark. Built in 1869 at Dumbarton, Scotland, the ship lived her life in the tea trade. Her claim to fame is that she raced another ship, the Thermopylae, from Shanghai to London in 1872. Although the Cutty Sark lost the race, she nevertheless gained fame when she lost her rudder in the Sunda Strait two weeks into the race. The plucky captain decided to plow ahead with an improvised rudder, and the Cutty Sark made it to London only a week after the Thermopylae, even though she was severely disabled.
In 1895, the Cutty Sark was sold to the Portuguese firm Ferreira and was renamed Ferreira after her new owners, although the crew called her Pequena Camisola, which means “little shirt” and is a direct translation of the Scottish name. In 1922, she was sold to a Captain Wilfred Dowman, who purchased the little vessel to restore it to its former glory and to use as a training vessel. In 1954 she was moved to a dry dock at Greenwich, in south London. For years, the Cutty Sark remained a tourist attraction, being close to the National Maritime Museum, the Royal Observatory, Greenwich Hospital, and Greenwich Park.
Sadly, on May 21, 2007, the ship, which had been undergoing restoration, caught on fire. Although it was feared that the ship might be totally lost, upon further inspection, it appears that much of the ship was not permanently damaged, and much of what was damaged was not original to the 1869 ship.
I mention all this because last week, British police announced that the fire was caused by a vacuum cleaner that had accidentally been left running that weekend. Someone deserves to get fired for this, but it’s at least good news that it was an accident… rather than arson, which was initially suspected.
Currently, there are two petitions about the Cutty Sark before the British Prime Minister: one for funds to restore the ship, and the other for funds to restore the ship into commission as a sail training vessel. As someone that’s seen the Cutty Sark on multiple occasions, as well as stood on the deck of the U.S.S. Constitution (which is still on the US Navy’s roster as an active battleship), I hope that it’s the latter.
Budwesier American Ale
OK, so by now I’m sure you’ve seen the Budweiser American Ale commercials on TV. Lisa and I had company last night, and I picked up a sixer of these just for kicks. I tried it… and, for the most part, I liked it.
American Ale is AB’s first attempt at a genuine push for an ale on the market. They’ve given it the honored Budweiser name instead of pawning it off on their off-brands like Rolling Rock or Michelob. And they’ve advertised the hell out of this stuff. Will American Ale be able to take on Boston Brewing, to say nothing of the Sierra Navadas of the world?
Well, here’s the thing: compared to even Sam Adams Boston Ale, American Ale just isn’t that interesting. It tastes… pretty good, just “less” of an ale. As Budweiser is the vanilla definition of a lager, so too is American Ale a bland ale. But it is an ale, which is a plus over lagers in my book. Even a bad ale is better than most good lagers to my taste, so… the more the merrier, I say!
If American Ale isn’t the most interesting ale at first glance, it is surprisingly drinkable. After the first one, the second and third became much more enjoyable. If you’re drinking for quantity and not quality, but you’d still like something with a little class and taste… American Ale is for you.
But now… there’s the 800-pound gorilla in the room: AB’s insanely large distribution system. Unlike Bass, which is touch-and-go as far as finding it on tap in a lot of places, AB products are sold almost everywhere. AB could snap their fingers and make American Ale appear almost anywhere they wanted. Which is intriguing. If I found myself in a bar that only has Heineken and Corona as imports (you know the places), American Ale would be a good second choice.
I don’t see myself turning away from PBR, but if my local is out of Pabst, American Ale would be a good choice as a replacement. It’s lawnmower beer, really… it’s it’s a decent one!