Kick ass. I think the name of the quiz is wrong, though, it should be “which Firefly character are you?”

Your results: You are Malcolm Reynolds (Captain)

Malcolm Reynolds (Captain)		80%
Zoe Washburne (Second-in-command)		70%
Wash (Ship Pilot)		65%
Dr. Simon Tam (Ship Medic)		65%
Kaylee Frye (Ship Mechanic)		50%
Alliance		35%
Inara Serra (Companion)		35%
Jayne Cobb (Mercenary)		35%
River (Stowaway)		30%
Derrial Book (Shepherd)		25%
A Reaver (Cannibal)		5%
Honest and a defender of the innocent. You sometimes make mistakes in judgment but you are generally good and would protect your crew from harm.

The battle for the division title in the NHL‘s Northwest Division isn’t just heating up, it’s nuclear:

The Wild has now gone 22-7-5 in its last 34 games, a .720 pace that, if extrapolated over 82 games, would work out to a 118-point season. Amazing hockey, and yet, they have been eating the Canucks‘ dust for, it seems, weeks on end. Vancouver has played its last 34 games at a .779 clip, which [to revisit that fantasyland where such extrapolations belong] equates to 128 points over a full season.

It’s nice having a Canucks team battling for first place in the division instead of the typical battling for the last playoff spot garbage that we used to get in the 80s.
[tags]nhl, hockey, vancouver canucks, minnesota wild[/tags]

musheroni
-noun
1. The combination of mushroom and pepperoni.

Example: I’d like to order two medium pizzas, one with pineapple and extra cheese, and the other with musheroni.
[tags]pizza, mushroom, pepperoni, musheroni, wordplay[/tags]

[tag]Typography[/tag] can be used to convey emotion and meaning through use of font selection, sizing, colour, and spacing. This clip is a fine example of that, fusing the worlds of typography and film together in a memorable way. Warning: there’s swearing.
[tags]pulp fiction, font, flash animation[/tags]

Honda Racing F1 has generated a heap of buzz for the upcoming Formula 1 season with its decision to go with an advertiser-free car, raising awareness of environmental issues through myearthdream.com instead. We here at canspice.org headquarters highly endorse this action. See, on myearthdream.com you can pledge to make a small change to your life to help the environment. Nothing earth-shattering like growing acres of hemp or becoming a crewmember on the Rainbow Warrior, these are simple pledges that won’t impact your life all that much, yet will have a large positive impact on the environment if enough people do it. Here’s the list of pledges you can do:

• Share my car. If you carpool once a week that’s 10% less pollution going into the atmosphere, and 10% less gasoline required to fuel a car.
• Cut unnecessary flights. Airplanes are huge polluters. Take the train, if you can. If you can’t, offset your carbon emissions by supporting carbon-removing activities such as tree-planting.
• Install at least three energy saving light bulbs. Compact fluorescent light bulbs produce the same amount of light for a fraction the electricity. Sure, they might cost more to buy in the shop, but you’ll save money in the long run.
• Take the bus or train. Mass transit is more efficient per passenger than automobiles. It’s cheaper, too.
• Cycle or walk to work or the shops. Not only will you get some exercise, you’ll save money and pollute less.
• Turn down my thermostat by 1C. Doing so not only reduces your power bill, but also cuts your carbon emissions, both by up to 10%.
• Give up ironing. Heat-producing appliances such as irons and hair dryers are massive wasters of electricity. An iron draws 1100 watts — 11 times more than a 100 watt light bulb. Cut that and save money.
• Not leave any of my appliances on standby or my phone on charge unnecessarily. Most modern appliances have a standby mode that draws electricity unnecessarily. Put them on a power strip that you can turn off with one simple flick of the switch.
• Wash my laundry at 30C. With the introduction of cold water laundry detergents, you no longer have an excuse to heat water for your laundry.
• Turn off the tap while I clean my teeth. A couple of gallons a day goes down the drain if you leave the tap on. A quick turn of the wrist conserves it.
• Recycle all my paper. Recycling paper means fewer trees chopped down. Fewer trees chopped down means more carbon dioxide removed from the atmosphere.
• Change my electricity supply to a renewable power supplier. If you have the option of more than one electricity supplier, choose one that uses renewable energy supplies like solar, wind, or hydro.

Individually they’re small things, but if enough people pledge to do at least one of these, then we can make a difference.

It’s hard for me to pledge to do one of these things, as I’m already doing most of them, and the others don’t really apply. We already recycle all our paper (and plastic, cans, and glass). We don’t fly that much. We’ve used cold water for laundry since before I can remember. We don’t have central heating or air conditioning. We don’t iron. We’ve converted almost all of our incandescent light bulbs to compact fluorescents. And we only have one choice in electricity suppliers, but they’re pushing for more renewable sources of electricity as it is (they’ve just brought a wind farm online).

Thus I’m pledging to share my car by carpooling with someone from work at least once a week. Now I just have to find someone to carpool with… :-)

[tags]environment, formula one, honda, energy conservation, water conservation, recycle[/tags]

Yet another blog meme, this one with some list from somewhere of the top 50 most significant science fiction and fantasy books from the last 50 years. Bold ones are those that I’ve read.

The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien
The Foundation Trilogy, Isaac Asimov
Dune, Frank Herbert
Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert A. Heinlein
A Wizard of Earthsea, Ursula K. Le Guin
Neuromancer, William Gibson
Childhood’s End, Arthur C. Clarke
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Philip K. Dick
The Mists of Avalon, Marion Zimmer Bradley
Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury
The Book of the New Sun, Gene Wolfe
A Canticle for Leibowitz, Walter M. Miller, Jr.
The Caves of Steel, Isaac Asimov
Children of the Atom, Wilmar Shiras
Cities in Flight, James Blish
The Colour of Magic, Terry Pratchett
Dangerous Visions, edited by Harlan Ellison
Deathbird Stories, Harlan Ellison
The Demolished Man, Alfred Bester
Dhalgren, Samuel R. Delany
Dragonflight, Anne McCaffrey
Ender’s Game, Orson Scott Card
The First Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever, Stephen R. Donaldson
The Forever War, Joe Haldeman
Gateway, Frederik Pohl
Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, J.K. Rowling
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams
I Am Legend, Richard Matheson
Interview with the Vampire, Anne Rice
The Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula K. Le Guin
Little, Big, John Crowley
Lord of Light, Roger Zelazny
The Man in the High Castle, Philip K. Dick
Mission of Gravity, Hal Clement
More Than Human, Theodore Sturgeon
The Rediscovery of Man, Cordwainer Smith
On the Beach, Nevil Shute
Rendezvous with Rama, Arthur C. Clarke
Ringworld, Larry Niven
Rogue Moon, Algis Budrys
The Silmarillion, J.R.R. Tolkien
Slaughterhouse-5, Kurt Vonnegut
Snow Crash, Neal Stephenson
Stand on Zanzibar, John Brunner
The Stars My Destination, Alfred Bester
Starship Troopers, Robert A. Heinlein
Stormbringer, Michael Moorcock
The Sword of Shannara, Terry Brooks
Timescape, Gregory Benford
To Your Scattered Bodies Go, Philip Jose Farmer

Clearly I need to read more. Eighteen out of fifty isn’t all that good.

[tags]science fiction, fantasy, books[/tags]

Ah, the Super Bowl halftime show. Will it ever be controversy-free? This year it was Prince and his phallic guitar, generating complaints to the FCC such as this:

It was obscene to show Prince, a HOMOSEXUAL person through a sheet, as to show his siluette while his guitar showed a very phalic symbol coming from his below-midriff section. I am very offended and would preffer not to have showed it to my 4 children who love football. One of them has hoped to be a quarterback and now he will turn out gay. I am actually considering to check him for HIV. Thanks CBS for turning my son GAY.

[tags]Prince, FCC, Super Bowl, complaint[/tags]

From the Victoria Times-Communist:

It’s more of an intersuction than an intersection.

For more than two decades, the roadway at Vancouver and View streets has been sinking into the marshland it was built on.

On Thursday, Victoria city council decided to sink $3 million into repairing the asphalt at the downtown intersection.

Not a moment too soon.

“It is right to the point where it is dangerous for bicycles and scooters,” said Robert Randall, president of the Downtown Residents Association. “It is a metre down in some places.”

The majority of the $3 million will be spent on the road, excavating fill, replacing it in the area and redirecting surface water from catch basins into the peat layer under the roadway. The decomposing peat layer is cited as one cause of the sinking.

The plan, to be presented at a future public meeting, also calls for $300,000 worth of “beautification” in the area that would include cluster lights, street furniture and other decorative elements. Half of that cost is to be shared with business and residents if they agree.

Garry Gilchrist, the manager at Aral Construction, which leases space in the nearby Harris Green plaza, said the plan is welcome, although area businesses will not be happy about the traffic disruptions.

Construction could start in June and end in December.

Gilchrist said he is aware of some of the problematic soil conditions because his company built the building leased by Frontrunners Footwear on the northwest corner of the intersection. That building sits on 46-metre piles, some of the longest in the city, he said.

I lived in the building Gilchrist talks about. I don’t remember the road sinking, but I guess he’d know better than I would.
[tags]Victoria, street, sinkhole, Titanic[/tags]

There are only three webcomics worth reading on a regular basis:

• The Perry Bible Fellowship – Three- or four-panel cartoons that start off normal and cute but usually end up being smutty or disgusting or shocking in some excellent way. Fine examples would be Kitty Heaven, Astronaut Fall, and Freaking Vortex. And PBF gains points for revealing the truth about why there are telescopes in Hawaii.
• Dinosaur Comics – The Google description for Dinosaur Comics is “sexy exciting dinosaur comics for the thinking man or lady”. Hilo theatre fans may appreciate A HISTORY OF HYSTERIA. The Everest Eliminator segueing into Bible II segueing into Reprise Comics is quality. Also, sexy is distracting, ON THE MOON.
• xkcd – “A webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language.” The whole set of comics is probably best summed up by Angular Momentum. xkcd caters to math nerdry, but there’s also history nerdry, physics / pop culture nerdry, Unix nerdry, Perl nerdry, and astronomy nerdry. The best ever comic ever written (well, not quite, as Calvin and Hobbes comics win by default) is Science. Bitches.

All three have RSS feeds (PBF, DC, and xkcd) so subscribe to them now.
[tags]webcomic, perry bible fellowship, dinosaur comics, xkcd, comic, funny[/tags]

The Canucks picked up Brent Sopel the other day. Filling out the defence and bringing the mullet back to Vancouver means things are looking good in V-City again!
[tags]brent sopel, vancouver canucks, hockey, nhl, mullet[/tags]