Flight of the Conchords

We really enjoy the show Flight of the Conchords on HBO.

Here are some clips, all probably copyright violations:


What You're Into



Hiphopopotamus vs. Rhymenoceros



Here's a part of their comedy act, on which the show is based:

Good news, everyone! Futurama returns November 27th

Futurama will return on November 27th as a full-length movie being released on DVD. The initial release will be followed by 3 more DVD movies.

After all 4 DVD movies have been released, they’ll be chopped up into 16 episodes which will air on Comedy Central along with new episodes created for Comedy Central.

Restaurant critic Dennis Getto dies at 57

I was surprised and saddened to hear that the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel's well-known restaurant critic died today.

Dennis Getto died of pulmonary fibrosis at only age 57.

He once came and spoke at a journalism class I took at UWM to a class of about 15 students. He was an engaging speaker and I became an immediate fan. He rarely gave public appearances and kept his identity a secret so restaurants wouldn't recognize him and give him preferential treatment. I enjoyed his columns, his web chats, and I trusted his food reviews. He was a good guy.

Coming this August - a new war?

Presidential candidate Ron Paul is predicting the start of a new war next month. Here are some of his reasons

• The Project for a New American Century (PNAC) agenda calls for the United States to engage and win 3 to 4 simultaneous theaters of war.

• The U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff this month said that the nation faces a heightened chance of an attack this summer. He indicated that his remarks were based on "a gut feeling" formed by past seasonal patterns of terrorist attacks, recent al-Qaeda statements, and intelligence he did not disclose.

• Congress is on summer break.

• Bush signed a new Executive Order: Blocking Property of Certain Persons Who Threaten Stabilization Efforts in Iraq.

• The aircraft carrier "Enterprise," the oldest in the fleet, moves into the Gulf to replace the USS Nimitz. Paul sees this ship as a "fall guy."

• Bush's approval ratings are at an all-time low.

There are more. Read the entire article: http://www.roncan.com/iranwar.html

Checkers is even crappier than previously thought

The perfect game of checkers ends in a tie? No way! And it took scientists from Canada to figure it out - probably because our public school system in the US is so bad. Damn that No Child Left Behind Act! I'm sure glad the scientists took time away from trying to cure cancer to finally solve this mystery.

From Yahoo!: The perfect game of checkers ends as a draw, Canadian computer scientists reported on Thursday.

The team at the University of Alberta said they had "solved" checkers, the 5,000-year-old popular board game also known as draughts. Their computer program, Chinook, spent more than 18 years playing out the 500 billion possible positions, they report in the journal Science.

"This paper announces that checkers is now solved: Perfect play by both sides leads to a draw," Jonathan Schaeffer and colleagues wrote in their report.

"That checkers is a draw is not a surprise; grandmaster players have conjectured this for decades."

But no computer program had been able to tackle the game thoroughly.

The researchers said checkers was the most complex game to have been solved - with every possible moved played out -- by a computer. "I think we've raised the bar, and raised it quite a bit, in terms of what can be achieved in computer technology and artificial intelligence," Schaeffer said in a statement.

The board game uses pieces that can move forward one square diagonally and a forced-capture rule.

While many computer programs exist to play games, and can beat humans at such complex games as chess, playing every possible move in a game is a much more difficult problem.

BlackBerry 8800

I got a new BlackBerry today. Yes, I'm addicted to BlackBerry.


The coolest thing is a built-in GPS receiver that works with Google Maps. It's freaky looking at the satellite view and seeing a blinking blue dot where you're standing.


Here's a shot of where it found me last night:

Cerne Abbas Homer

Simpsons Avatar

The Simpson's Movie site lets you create an avatar based on how you would look as a character on the show. I like the way mine turned out.


My brother's is here.

Can you get by with only 5 sheets?

There's a new automatic toilet paper dispenser on the market. Kimberly-Clark believes most people will be satisfied with just five sheets of toilet paper, which is 20 percent less than the common US citizen uses per trip to the toilet.

I've taken that a step further by no longer using toilet paper at all. I now only use loose leaf paper, preferably the college-ruled variety.

Brew Pub Law

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel has an article today on a proposed brew pub bill in the Wisconsin state Legislature. The Brewpub Tourism Development Act limits how much beer a brew pub can produce, which could hamper the growth of brew pubs that want to sell their beer in packaged form at liquor stores and supermarkets. Local brew pubs protested the new bill by spilling bill into the Milwaukee River.

I first heard about this bill a few months ago when I went to visit the new Great Dane Pub at Hilldale Mall in Madison. I'm a big fan of Great Dane and I think their downtown Madison restaurant is probably the best brew pub that I've been to. The Hilldale restaurant is their 3rd location and I even brought an empty growler along so I could take some beer home. But when we arrived at the brew pub we were told that they weren't allowed to serve their own beer because of an antiquated Wisconsin law - so they serve some of their competitors beer their instead. I thought that was crazy.

Under current law (enacted in 1933), a Wisconsin brew pub can operate only two locations if it produces more than 4,000 barrels of beer a year. The pending bill would raise that production limit to 10,000 barrels and allow up to six locations.

This works out for Great Dane, but breweries and brew pubs with standalone breweries think this unfairly favors brew pubs that don't package their own beer. All of the brew pubs in Wisconsin are well under 10,000 barrels a year, but some of the breweries, like Lakefront Brewery, are already near or above 10,000. This means that Lakefront would not be allowed to open another location (like a restaurant or bar) and sell their own beer there. Lakefront thinks this gives brew pubs like Great Dane a big advantage, especially if they decided to open a brew pub in Milwaukee (good for me, bad for Lakefront).

Milwaukee Ale House owner Jim McCabe is against this bill because he's opening a stand-alone brewery in Walkers Point and another brew pub in Grafton. Although the Milwaukee Ale House only does 1,300 barrels a year now, they'll be producing a lot more beer once the brewery is up and running and could reach that 10,000 limit.

Rob Larson from Tyranena is also against the bill and wrote about it in his brewery email newsletter: Today, all small breweries are essentially treated equally. We can all bottle, keg, distribute and are permitted two liquor licenses (one at the location of the brewery and the second on property owned by the brewery). This has created a level playing field between small brewers, whether they choose to have a restaurant or just a tap room. The new legislation (28 pages in length) creates an uneven environment, one which favors brewpubs over microbreweries... and then favors certain brewpubs over others. The bill would permit brewpubs to brew, bottle, keg, distribute and have up to six locations without the onerous financial burden of owning all the real estate. In essence, they can do everything a microbrewery can do... but have four more locations and not be required to own all the real estate. I personally enjoy eating and drinking at the state's brewpubs... but they are also competitors for draft lines and potentially bottle placements in the store. I do not think the state should be enacting legislation that gives them a competitive advantage over us.

Gray's Brewing Company has a brewpub (Gray's Tied House) in Fitchburg, but because they have stand alone brewing facility in Janesville, they would be prevented by statute from opening up any additional brewpubs while The Great Dane Pub and Brewery would be able to do so. The Milwaukee Ale House is hoping to open a second pub location as well as a stand alone microbrewery... but would be prevented from doing so under this legislation while others can have six locations. Quite frankly, I think all breweries should be able to have up to six liquor licenses. I would enjoy seeing a chain of Sprecher or Capital Beer Halls across the state... a number of Leinie's Lodges... or a bunch of Lake Louie Fish Houses... or New Glarus Swiss-themed pubs with chocolate on the menu and clocks on the wall. Personally, I would love to have a chain of bluegrass dance halls in key underserved markets. But these are things that cannot come to pass under this legislation. In fact, the Granite City brewpub chain would be limited to only two locations due to the way in which they brew... is that really fair?

Even the title "Brewpub Tourism Development Act" frustrates me. Do only brewpubs bring in tourists? Is the restaurant really the thing that brings people to town? I suspect the hundreds of thousands of people that tour Miller Brewery might disagree. Or the huge throngs that pass through Sprecher, Lakefront or Leinie's each week. Or the tons that drive down to little New Glarus. Or the thousands that we bring into Lake Mills each year either just to come to the brewery or for many of our special events.

I am not opposed to the Great Dane being able to expand from two to six locations... I just want fairness in how it is done. Let all of us breweries have up to six locations.

I understand there is other legislation recently added to the bill that is also bad for some breweries (none of it's bad the the Great Dane, which is located one block off capitol square - walking distance for the Madison fat cats). Sand Creek Brewing in Black River Falls claims that the new bill means a "that any brewery that is currently over 10,000 bbls and doesn’t have a restaurant permit will never be able to get one if the bill is passed. If the brewery is under 10,000 bbls, the brewery will be able to get a restaurant permit but will never be able to grow above 10,000 bbls unless they give up the restaurant. Since a lot of brewery business models in the state have been built on having a restaurant in their facility, this is a very damaging addition to the bill."

Now I'm a bit worried about the bill. I want there to be more brew pubs, but it sounds like this bill could actually drive some out of business.

Fearful Symmetries has a lot more on the story: http://powervoyeur.blogspot.com/

Raiders of the Lost Ark: The Adaptation

A group of boys in Mississippi created a shot-for-shot amateur-video remake of Raiders of the Lost Ark. It took them 7 years and 1/2,000th of Paramount's original $20 million budget, even creating elaborate special effects in their parents' garage. They started in 1981 when they were 12 years old and finished when they were in college.

The movie became a cult classic and was good enough to draw the attention of Steven Spielberg, who invited them to his office at Skywalker Ranch for a screening.

Here's the full article in the Village Voice. There are also some clips of the movie on YouTube, but I'd like to see the whole thing.

Free Fares?

Here's an interesting article promoting free public transportation:

50 States

This is a fun game where you try to accurately place each state on the US map. Try to beat my score - I was only 22 miles off on average.

Test your knowledge of U.S. geography with this cartographical puzzler. Place each state in its proper place on the map. Can you get all 50 plus the capital:

Airport Security

Someone took this picture of a computer screen at the airport.

Microsoft Windows also caused some problems on this ATM.

Gershwin Prize for Popular Song

We watched the presentation for The Library of Congress Gershwin Prize for Popular Song on PBS the other night.


This was the first Gershwin Prize ever and it was awareded to Paul Simon. This award recognizes the profound and positive effect of popular music on the world’s culture. It will be awarded annually to a composer or performer whose lifetime contributions exemplify the standard of excellence associated with the Gershwins.


I imagine Bob Dylan will get the award soon, if not next year.

It was a great concert - a lot of different artists performed Paul Simon songs during the 2 hour show:

• Yolanda Adams
• Marc Anthony
• Shawn Colvin
• The Dixie Hummingbirds
• Jessy Dixon and the Jessy Dixon Singers
• Jerry Douglas
• Art Garfunkel
• Philip Glass
• Alison Krauss
• Ladysmith Black Mambazo
• Lyle Lovett
• Stephen Marley
• Dianne Reeves
• James Taylor
• Stevie Wonder
• Buckwheat Zydeco

Paul Simon came out at the end and played for the last hour or so. His best performance was with Ladysmith Black Mambazo from the Graceland album.

The sound was perfect and the concert was shown in wide-screen high-definition - definitely worth watching.

I'm sure PBS will be showing it many more times and will probably release it on DVD too.

Ice Cream vs. Beer

Heather and I were discussing which was worse for you: ice cream or beer. Heather loves ice cream and I’m a big fan of beer.


While Heather was enjoying a chocolate-dipped vanilla cone from Dairy Queen today, I claimed that beer is MUCH better for you than ice cream. Since it’s made from things like hops and barley, it’s basically as wholesome as bread.


The internet tells us that beer contains vitamin B6 which prevents the build up in the body of a chemical called homocysteine - thought to be linked to an increase in the risk of heart disease. It also protects against heart attacks, stroke, hypertension, diabetes and dementia.


Beer is so good for you, I’m calling for the FDA to add beer to the food pyramid, and somewhere near the top.



















I checked the Dairy Queen website and the Miller Brewing website, and both have a section for looking up nutritional information. Here's the breakdown:


Beer is better for you than ice cream! Some of the stuff at DQ is actually really bad for you. The dipped cone that Heather ate today even contained some of the dreaded trans fat.


The worst dessert for you to eat at DQ appears to be the Large Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Blizzard (Heather loves these too, but probably not the large sized one). One of those has 1320 calories, 52 grams of fat (6 grams of trans fat), and 193 carbs. You could have 15 beers before you'd reach the carb level of one of those Blizzards!



An intern at my work used to eat a 7½" Pepperoni Melt from Cousin's Subs every day for lunch. He was a growing boy so sometimes he would even eat 2 of them. After all, who wouldn't enjoy a hot sub made with ham, pepperoni, and melted Provolone cheese prepared with mayo, lettuce, onions, tomatoes, and seasoned with oregano. We looked them up at cousinssubs.com and found that they are quite bad for you too: 730 calories, 45 grams of fat, and 50 carbs. He stopped eating so many of them after learning that. But the Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Blizzard puts the Pepperoni Melt to shame!


The worst beer for you (that Miller makes) appears to be Sparks Plus 7%. I never heard of Sparks Plus 7% but I generally stay away from Malt beverage/Energy drink combos. Sparks Plus 7% has 288 calories, 37 carbs, and 7% alcohol by volume.


The worst real beer that Miller makes is Leinenkugel's Apple Spice with 208 calories and 26.8 carbs.