It seems people on the blogroll are starting to develop an enemy/rival/pseudo-enemy with a cute nickname:
Samuraipawn: Evil Emperor
Castling Queenside: King Kong
Dinosaur Mom: Eeevil Seestor
Me: Sworn Enemy
There’s probably a few I’m forgetting as well. Who’s your enemy/rival/pseudo-enemy?
(By the way, a lot of comments I haven’t responded to yet. I’m getting to it.)
Some people take offense at killing dolphins for food. Yet when it comes to catfish, shrimp, chicken, or pigs, a lot of these same people won’t bat an eye. (Note that PETA gets full marks for being consistent.)
Look it, we either get to kill animals for food, or we don’t. But agonizing over “cute” animals while being guilt-free about eating others? I have no use for it.
Now I have to walk across the parking lot to throw out my trash. Punks. (Incidentally, it appears that the dumpster that was there before was not intended for personal use.)
Now:
So a couple economists and psychologists did a two-year experiment where they observed the results of “speed-dating”. It’s essentially where a bunch of people have a few minute “dates” with many people in one night, and decide if they’d be interested in continuing seeing each other. The results that stuck in my craw:
1. Beauty was a much more significant factor for men’s decisions.
2. Men don’t care so much for women more intelligent or successful than they are.
3. Women have a strong preference for their own race; men don’t care so much.
The article in question: An Economist Goes to a Bar
Huge thanks to Annie for reminding me about Monday Fighter! And I have enough for the next month or so…if I remember to post them…
When I started this blog, I promised I wouldn’t do this. If you read this, you will be subjecting yourself to more personal stories. [EDIT: OK, so this post is brutally long. So sorry. I just cut a few things out to make it look more manageable.]
Seeing as I brought pretty much nothing in the way of furniture when moving, I’m having to restock most everything. The top priority was getting an actual work desk and chair (got both for $50), since I’m telecommuting, and it would have been dreadful joint stiffness otherwise. Setting up everything on boxes and suitcases, while possible, would certainly been an inferior set-up.
So for the past couple weeks the sum of my furniture has been the following:
Work desk (1)
Work chair (1)
Air mattress (2) (contribution from parents)
So eating meals and watching TV have been conducted on the floor, which I don’t even consider an inconvenience. But it would be nice to have a comfy chair with soft cushions, and some other stuff. Especially now my TV watching is up from about a hour a week to maybe 6 hours a week (concentrated on Sundays, consistenting entirely of sports or “educational” channels).
On Saturday, I went to Ikea on multiple people’s recommendations. First of all, it must noted that the length of time it took me to link Ikea’s colors with Sweden’s flag was embarrassingly long. Then again, I am American, so knowing what Sweden’s flag looks like–heck, knowing Sweden’s in Indonesia–probably puts me ahead of the curve.
It’s worth stopping in an Ikea once. I’m sure there’s some variation in them, but this one was pretty big, including a restaurant and kids’ play area. They lay everything out in a huge circle. Think I spent about 3 hours there deciding on the look of furniture, evaluating cost vs quality, and watching Notre Dame get destroyed by Air Force.
They even have some Engrish…one wall contains a world map mural, upon which they mark their locations. Looks like they have 3 or 4 stores in “Tawain”.
Incidentally, there was a very strong possibility of buying a TV stand that was more expensive than my TV. Finding that odious in principle, I made sure that didn’t happen. I ended up going with a cheapo side table and TV stand, decent chair, and splurged (relatively) on the coffee table.
A lot of the furniture you pick up in boxes just before reaching the cashier, and when you’re in the showroom, there’s a tag that indicates which aisle to pick your stuff in. You end up going through their entire store first, which means they can sell you more stuff. They ended up getting about 20% more money out of me in the lighting section. Got a floor lamp (the design was called “Not”, which probably means something else in Swedish). And a blue glowy decoration thing, which was, sadly, more expensive than the Not lamp. But it was nifty, and the number of decorations I own is painfully few anyway. And more energy-saving light bulbs.
Upon picking up the boxes, I made the discovery that I’m capable of carrying 107 pound (48 kg) boxes that contain, say, a coffee table, for short distances.
Upon getting home, I re-discovered that I’m capable of carrying 107 pound (48 kg) boxes that contain, say, a coffee table, for short distances. Unwisely, I tried to carry the coffee table from the car to the apartment–and I was this close to making it–but I dropped it on its corner and ended up shattering the glass sheet for the table top.
The smart thing would have been to think, “OK, this is 107 pounds (48 kg)*; maybe I can open up the box and carry the pieces in a more manageable fashion.”
After cleaning up the glass and assembling all the furniture it came out something like this. Besides the blue glowy decoration thing, I put out a couple of my nicer chess sets (well, my only nice chess sets) in lieu of actual decorations.
The results can be seen in these night pictures, with only the blue glowy decoration thing on. The first picture was taken with a longer exposure and no flash; the second was with flash.
This was one of those “landmine” games where the Dolphins could have easily ruined their quest for immortality. Instead, they dodge a bullet, losing to the Bills 13-10 on a field goal with 46 seconds left. They are now 0-9.
They must now carry the mantle, since the previously winless Rams beat the Saints today.
10 Things to Say in Spanish to Pick Up a Girl
Anyone who recommends asking “How old are you?” or “What is your favorite color?” to pick up a chick… Seriously, I’m not sure how to react to that.
The best part about Engrish is not simply that it exists, but it destroys the English language in ways that you’d never think of:
“Ustensils” you can almost convince yourself, “Well, that’s just a typo.” I’m not exactly sure how one transmutes “with” into “wight”, a dreadfully uncommon word in English.
Last night, I returned to Hong Kong Food Market to purchase an electric rice cooker. The cashier there was friendly and helpful, although a tad hard to understand since his English was middling. They had several brands, and he recommended the “Tiger” brand as the best. I requested the 10 cup version, and after he put the box on the table, I saw the price tag of $105. “No, this is too expensive,” I laughed, so he offered the 8 cup version which was “only” $99. (Note: It had better be one heck of a rice cooker for me to be paying triple digits for one.) Eventually, I ended up getting a $30 brand, which is closer to what I’d envisioned on spending. We will see how long it lasts before it explodes.
In any case, I couldn’t get the sign hanging by the rice cookers out of my head: “3 days to return all eleclric merchandies”.
If you want to explore something a bit different than international chess, I’d highly recommend taking a look at Xiangqi (Chinese Chess). It’s a wide-open and more unpredictable game, focusing more on tactics than strategy.
You’ll notice some interesting features, starting with the board itself. The board is considered to be 9×10, since the pieces are placed on the line intersections. In the middle there’s a river that affects gameplay, and each side has a 3×3 palace out of which their Generals (king) cannot exit.
The Red side I’ve always seen colored as red, but the Black side can be black, green, or blue. In fact, green’s been used in about a quarter or third of the sets I’ve seen.
The pieces are represented by a Chinese character, and sometimes, different words are used for different sides! This set is unusual in that most of the time, the Cannons (located on the rank behind the pawns) usually use slightly different characters. My set does have a picture representation on the back, but it’s not helpful in the long-run because most sets don’t have anything except the Chinese!
The Cannon is a Rook-like piece that moves like a Rook, but to capture, it’s required to jump over exactly one other piece (friend or foe).
One of the most striking and important aspects is the lack of a solid rank of pawns. There are only five, which means there’s a lot of wide-open action pre-made for the Rooks and Cannons. “Pawn structure” is meaningless, and according to various sources, there’s not even a real struggle for control of the center. (If you recall, in chess, the Rook is the only piece that can control as many squares from the corner and side as from the center.)
There’s even a “fool’s mate” in Chinese Chess that’s four moves long (I lost to it my very first game), where both Cannons are lined up on the same file as the general.
Some links:
Peter Donnelly gives an excellent introduction to Chinese Chess here.
Normally, I don’t like linking Wikipedia, but their Xiangqi article is very well done.
A lot of basic strategy and tactics here. The English is imperfect, but comprehensible.
This guy has a freeware Xiangqi program Qianhong (According to the site: The name Qianhong (”chyen hOng”) means “Light Red”. It is a play on the name of IBM’s “Deep Blue” Chess computer and refers to this program’s weak computer AI.)
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