"Who can resist chunky bacon ice cream?"

Sometimes, I really love this country.

Tackling an origami project.

I was lax in updating the blog this week, but I've been much...um, laxer, with origami over the past few months. I was looking over my origami workspace recently (yes, I have an origami workspace) and thought it'd be fun to chronicle a complicated project. So I've decided to take a stab at a model I've never been able to complete: Tom Hull's five intersecting tetrahedra.

Like a lot of modular origami projects, the difficulty in this one isn't in the folding, it's in the construction. My previous attempt ended with the tetrahedral frames falling apart as I tried to weave them together. I thought of two different strategies that might help this time around:

Glue. Lots of it. With sturdy construction (except for one point for leaving the frames open until they've been woven) I hopefully can figure out how to put them together.

Paper type. Sometimes with modulars you have to get very rough with the pieces before they'll fit. I was thinking of trying different paper types, see if there were types that were more tear-resistant, so I have more leeway when "weaving" the frames.

Anyway, any insights or frustrations, I'll post and hopefully anyone who's done this model before can post similar insights/frustrations in the comments before I become inarticulate with origami-induced frustration.

A tip of the hat to the Japanese.

Not only do they create Aliens-esque robotic exoskeletions to help the elderly and double the strength of the average person, but they make it look like an iPod.

Today's news, in sonnet.

For his Court nominee, Bush seems
to want a speedy confirmation.
And for the Democrats, this means
the pool cue. Without lubrication.

They say that sometimes life and art
will both agree to imitate.
But when King Ralph's the subject's heart
then it's time to inebriate.

Carjacking and violent crime
is no big deal for games kids play.
But find a sex scene, then it's time
for them to take that game away.

Scotty, I'll buy you a beer
when we meet at that frontier.

Things I learned in Atlantic City this weekend.

Note: The absence of gambling truisms (i.e. it's for suckers) in this post is intentional, as I am referring only to things I've learned.

1. There's a place on the boardwalk where feral cats congregate (between the Showboat and the Trump Gaudy Abomination, er, Taj Mahal) and in fact workers there have put out food and litter boxes under the boardwalk for the visiting kitties. One cute little black cat was letting people pet him, then he proceeded to cross my path about seventeen times.


2. There's no reason to go to the Taj anymore, as other casinos have stepped up to match the Taj's only redeeming feature, the poker room. While the Taj is the most popular and has a varied range of games, the Tropicana and the Borgata have large poker rooms also, and the Showboat's recently opened room, though smaller, is very comfortable and I was able to get a 2-4 Texas Hold'em seat during the busy weekend. I also visited the Bally's Wild West and Sands poker rooms and found them serviceable; the Sands has also added a metro theme to their casino which I found appealing.


3. If you're a gambler on a reasonable budget and can resist the Siren call of the slots (unlike me), poker will definitely give you the most play for your money. Even the Taj will have reasonable levels (though you'll wait longer due to the popularity). The Showboat was my favorite room (in fact, I dug the Showboat's new House of Blues-inspired redesign), with the Borgata a close second. If you've got a recommendation for a room that I didn't visit, let me know in the comments.


4. If you go to Chef Vola's and they offer a Chilean sea bass with a macadamia-nut crust, order that bad boy.


5. Finally, please, take it from me, just say no to video crack.

On vacation for the weekend...

...so in lieu of any half-baked blabbering, here's a slightly more dignified picture of my cat, Roy. His tail was like that when I got him, the story I heard was he lost half of it as a kitten and it didn't heal properly so it had to be bobbed. But he's fine, healthy, and aerodynamically sound.

Have a good weekend, readers...

"See where I'm coming from?"

Although my vote will be for Jon Corzine in the NJ governor's election, I have to give the New Jersey Republican Party credit for laying the smackdown on the now former president of the New Jersey College Republicans, and doing it with exactly the incredulous anger that the situation warranted.

Seems like the president of the College Republicans demanded money from the campaign of Republican candidate Doug Forrester for operations. It didn't go over very well.

The Politics NJ site has the entire email exchange. It's great.

Odds and sods...

* Dammit, Canada! First universal health care, now you get the new Harry Potter before us? Not fair! You better hope our robot army doesn't hear of this...

* The patriotic and fair-minded GOP responded to the likelihood that an important administration official could very well have committed treason by...bleating and sobbing that Hillary Clinton called Dubya a mean name. To be fair, I do think Senator Clinton was wrong to compare our president to Alfred E. Neuman, a red-haired incompetent simpleton thoroughly divorced from reality, when she knows full well that President Bush has gray hair.

* Apparently some people are using bicycles and GPS systems to play a real-life version of the Tron Lightcycle game. You're better off reading the Slashdot link; maybe THEY can figure out what the hell is going on, cause I can't.

Enjoy those million-dollar birthday fries!

Quick diversion here to wish Matt of de rerum natura a happy birthday! Hope you had lotsa fun w/the C-Ville blog posse on Friday.

Probably stepping on Atrios' toes here.

But to test out Blogger's new photo uploading feature (with my five-year-old Mac, I can't use Hello), I offer you this photo of my stubby-tailed cat wiping his ass on my carpet.

Enjoy!

Wishing peace on that fair city.

LONDON, thou art of townes A per se.
Soveraign of cities, seemliest in sight,
Of high renoun, riches and royaltie;
Of lordis, barons, and many a goodly knyght;
Of most delectable lusty ladies bright;
Of famous prelatis, in habitis clericall;
Of merchauntis full of substaunce and of myght:
London, thou art the flour of Cities all.

William Dunbar (1465-1520?), "In Honour of the City of London"

Today's news, in sonnet.

London's got Olympic fever!
It'll be a summer sizzler!
Plus all atheletes will receive a
Briton staple: Turkey Twizzlers!

Topics at the G8 summit:
global warming and disease.
And we'll start soon as we're done with
saving Live8 MP3s.

Judith Miller's off to prison.
Cooper would have done the same,
but his source made his decision.
Yet Bob Novak skirts the blame.

President Remedial Reading
deserves a nice big birthday greeting!

Well, it was this or Silent Lucidity II: Quieter and Clearer...

I'll bet you were all waiting for me to point you to the official site of the sequel to Queenrÿche's classic 1988 prog-rock opus Operation: Mindcrime, slated for release in 2006, right?

Of course you were.

Happy Independence Day to all.

What do we mean by patriotism in the context of our times? I venture to suggest that what we mean is a sense of national responsibility ... a patriotism which is not short, frenzied outbursts of emotion, but the tranquil and steady dedication of a lifetime.

- Adlai Stevenson

The difference between patriotism and nationalism is that the patriot is proud of his country for what it does, and the nationalist is proud of his country no matter what it does; the first attitude creates a feeling of responsibility, but the second a feeling of blind arrogance that leads to war.

- Sydney J. Harris