Photo honored at web site Renderosity

From Harassing Harris's Hawks

A PHOTO OF A JUVENILE HARRIS'S HAWK I SNAPPED less than a mile from the front door was chosen one of the Best of Last Week at an art and photography site of which I am a member.

Renderosity selects 30 photos from among the hundreds uploaded each week for what it terms "a second look." Here is the link to Last Week in the Gallery.

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/showthread.php?thread_id=2843642

--BAS

Could our rusted and tired prose but rise to the top of the foam

I WAS DOING SOME RESEARCH FOR A FRIEND TODAY on Kemper College in St. Louis, Mo., founded in 1840 and closed four years later due to financial problems. I came across this dedication speech by the man who founded the college. It points out yet again how eloquently our forbears spoke and wrote.

 "Our motto must be – peace, and to our posts … the wind of persecution may howl a hurricane, and the lightning of malice may fall upon us, but if our good ship be tight and free, our gallant mast may be bent but not broken. And like the proud eagle soaring aloft, she will ride the billow to its top of foam, and glory in the strength that overcomes the storm."

Wow. These were the the noble words of Joseph McDowell, a professor of surgery who presided at the cornerstone-laying and remained as head of Kemper College, which after its closing morphed into another medical institution.

--BAS

Something's got to be done to eliminate concussions in sports

JUST WONDERING. HAS ANYBODY CONSIDERED INFLATABLE 'AIR BAGS' inside hockey or football helmets to reduce the growing incidence of concussions in professional sports?

There's no doubt the technology exists to do so. Like, helmets with air bladders pumped full to keep them in place after the athletes put them on and additional bladders which would inflate instantly with sharp impact. Compressed air to inflate the protective layer(s) in a shell on the exterior of the helmet.

How about a 'crushable' outer shell of three layers to absorb some of the initial shock?  The athletes would probably find the new-age helmets too heavy and too cumbersome, but something has to be done.

Athletes today are bigger, faster and stronger and yet the arenas in which they compete are the original size. Obviously, players' impacts are much more savage.

There are dozens of athletes right now whose careers are in jeopardy because of concussions (MVPs Sidney Crosby and Justin Morneau, to name two) and the number of incidents is rising precipitously.

--BAS

Double double doublespeak

MITT ROMNEY ON THE CAMPAIGN TRAIL: "I believe in an America where millions of Americans believe in an America that's the America millions of Americans believe in. That's the America I love."

Amerigo Vespucchi, a member of the Hall Of Retired Explorers, must be busting a gut laughing. Leif Erickson, the Viking who actually landed in Newfoundland and explored the Americas coast along what is now Canada about 450 years before either Vespucchi or Columbus, no doubt isn't amused.

One wonders what the Americas would have been called had Leif got lucky and had his names adopted. His earlier choices, Vinland (Greenland) for an island which is 95% ice, and Iceland for an island which is 90% green, gives us a clue: North American would have been called Southland and South America, Northland.

--BAS

What's in a name? Let your imagination take flight.

I'D NEVER HEARD THE TERM 'MURMURATION' APPLIED TO A FLOCK OF STARLINGS until I watched the breath-taking video (two posts below) which has gone viral on the Internet. Who came up with that collective noun in the first place, we wondered?

Photo from Wikipedia Commons

Here's what Oxford says: "Late Middle English: from French, from Latin murmuratio(n-), from murmurare 'to murmur'. The usage as a collective noun dates from the late 15th century." Looking up the word via Google brought hundreds of links (maybe more as I gave up the search after a bit) to the actual video.

So what are some other collective nouns which describe birds? Wikipedia knows! I've cherry-picked a few from an extensive list:

A peep of chickens; a herd of cranes; a murder of crows; a trip of dotterel; a badling (or raft) of ducks; a charm of goldfinches; a rasp of guinea fowl; a train of jackdaw;  an exaltation of larks; tidings of magpies; a pandemonium of parrots;  a drift of quail; an unkindness of ravens; a fall of woodcocks.

To which list we at Leave Only Footprints suggest a collective for turkeys: A platter of butterballs.

--BAS

Photo of Hildebrandt's starling from Wikipedia. Now THESE gorgeous birds would be welcome at your bird feeder, unlike their pesky European starling cousins which were introduced in North America in the 1800s.

Same old 'old news' is killing newspapers

MANY (MOST?) NEWSPAPERS ARE ON THE ENDANGERED LIST and some have already gone extinct, having been clubbed to death by TV, Radio and the Internet. And they went extinct for a good reason. Most newspapers are terminally boring.

As we often do on slow "news" days, this morning we scanned the online versions of papers in New Zealand, Australia, Moldova, the Solomon Islands and Guatemala, among others, and came away disgusted, but not surprised. Most newspapers still don't get it.

Every one we scanned today followed the same trite formula for its front page: Budgets being slashed; politicians caught with their flies (not fishing) down; the U.S. election campaign--yes, even in Moldova; controversy over this and that, this and that usually of the most trivial nature.

Who really cares that a cash shortfall might mean layoffs at the Solomon Islands' version of the Chamber of Commerce? Who really cares that the potholes on the main drag in Edinburgh are growing in size? Who really cares if the town treasurer slipped out the back window with a satchel of loot? Hell, the same things happened just last year, and the year before that. And were on the front page then, too.

It goes without saying that newspapers can't compete with the electronic media and the Internet for immediacy. But they can clobber TV and Radio with in-depth reporting, their strong suit. And with enterprise reporting. If I were running a newsroom today, I'd move the various editors around to other departments for a day on a regular basis. And I'd invite reporters to the editors' daily meetings and kick the editors out of the office once in a while to see what's really going on in town.

I'd make sure every pronouncement out of City Hall or the Prime Minister's office ended up on the back page, just above the large ad for estate sales.  And I'd invite the senior class from the nearby journalism school to run the paper for a day. Fresh ideas and young faces might just stop the printers' ink bleeding. "Same old, same old" will certainly lead to a R.I.P.-tide.

--BAS

Take a look at this vid. It's neat.

Murmuration from Sophie Windsor Clive on Vimeo.

We don't publish the juicy parts, but here's a web site that does

NOT TO PILE ON CAPT. COURAGEOUS, BUT more rumors and innuendo have hit the fan about his activities before the huge cruise ship grounded and overturned.

Under the headline 'Skipper's Sexy Siren', the New York Post hints the captain might not have had his mind firmly fixed on the navigation charts before the tragedy. Leave Only Footprints has a strict policy which prohibits publishing rumors and innuendo, but no such rule for linking to a site which doesn't.

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/international/skipper_sexy_siren_CKhBEeYRmIcF1IficHFw4I?CMP=OTC-rss&FEEDNAME=

--BAS

Who was the wiseass who said computers would make things easier?

1. A PRINTER THAT DOESN'T PRINT; 2. A BLU RAY burner that stops burning; 3. an expensive software upgrade that screws up the computer; 4. newspapers that won't accept obituary notices online; 5. a seriously complicated (and expensive) game that comes with no manual.

Just two more days of frustration at the Leave Only Footprints 'Computer Sciences Lab and Internet Research Facility'.

1. The HP Photosmart printer still does photos but no longer prints directly on DVDs with printable surfaces, which is the reason I bought the D7560 in the first place.

2. The Blu Ray burner burns Blu Ray disks, but no longer burns regular DVDs as advertised, and which it did for a few days after it was purchased.

3. OnOne Photo Suite v5.5 worked so well that upgrading to v6.0.1 (at half the regular price) seemed like a no-brainer. Details of the nightmare which followed would fill a CD. OnOne did refund my money but the old v5.5 only partially works despite hours banging my head on the desk.

4. We are in the 21st century, right? Apparently some newspapers are still working under 1960s rules. The only two papers selected to run an obituary and photo require filling out "forms", which they're happy to mail you.

5. ANNO 2070 is a world building computer game that's so complicated even 10-year-olds would have trouble figuring it out. And why would anyone want a manual? Other than a 35-page PDF file which doesn't begin to scratch the surface, the company doesn't even offer a manual people MIGHT WANT TO BUY.

Bah, humbug.

--BAS

Captain performing a 'bow' to legendary mariner when the ship grounded

THE SKIN-AND-BONES COVERAGE OF THE CRUISE SHIP SINKING LEAVES one wondering what went wrong? ("Two more bodies found..." "Cruise lines blames captain..." "Company stocks sink...") tell us nothing about the central elements of the tragedy.

What the hell really happened off the coast of the tiny Italian town called Giglio? Well, it took no more than two minutes scanning an Italian newspaper to find out. Here's a remarkable account in Corriere Della Sera's English language edition which has some sobering answers.

Captain Schettino                       --Getty Photo

"The captain’s unforgivable irresponsibility, as Grosseto’s chief prosecutor Francesco Varusio called it, was a tribute to Mario Palombo, a legend among Costa Crociere’s commanders, and a favour to the only Giglio native on board, chief steward Antonello Tievoli. “I never thought I’d be landing at home”, he told the fellow islanders who provided assistance on shore (after the shipwreck). There are good people who become the unwitting victims of other people’s stupidity. Tievoli is the son of Giglio’s old hairdresser. A former restaurateur and manager of a campsite, he went to sea twelve years ago. On Friday, Captain Schettino and his attendants summoned him to the bridge. “Antonello, come and see. We’re right on top of Giglio”, they told him. Perhaps it was a friendly leg-pull since Tievoli was supposed to disembark the week before. However, his replacement failed to show and he had to remain on board. Tievoli duly went and looked. He has no duties in the engine room or on deck but he does have two good eyes. “Watch out. We’re very close to shore”. But it was too late.


"Today, the chief steward from Giglio has shut himself up at home – he lives a long way from Giglio – and those who have spoken to him say he's torn by guilt over an unsolicited tribute that has turned him into an unwilling protagonist in one of Italy’s worst maritime disasters. Tievoli has been interviewed by coastguard officers on behalf of the prosecutors in charge of the inquiry and will have to repeat his version to the Carabinieri. It is a fate, and an anger, that he must share with Mario Palombo, the man whom every Giglio-born seaman with Costa Crociere looked up to. Sailors call sailing past a place for the benefit of a crew member a 'bow'."

Now, to find out if the ship is close to sliding off the ledge and disappearing out of sight. How do they plan to salvage it? WHO IS this captain guy? Will colossal blunders henceforth be called schettinos?

--BAS

Today's journalists could almost cover a story sitting in front of a TV

PHOTOS OF A GARGANTUAN CRUISE SHIP AGROUND and on its side off the coast of Italy stirred the newsman adrenalin in me early this morning. In another life, every staff reporter and photographer would be on or over a blockbuster story like that gathering pieces of the tragedy to be assembled on the newspapers's first four or five pages, and damn quick too...deadline is in two hours.

The Costa Concordia on its side after grounding. --AP photo

Today the news-gathering process is eminently easier what with wireless laptops and cell phones and satellite uplinks. Back in the day, though, reporters' resourcefulness was vital in getting their stories (and photographers' films) back to the newsroom.

In one case, a staff photographer was allowed into a medium security prison in Kingston, Ontario, to photograph an inter-prison softball game. He recognized a young prisoner playing third base who had been in the news for months a few years prior and snapped a few photos. Later one of the authorities noticed the photographer taking a lot of pictures with the lens pointed toward third base and confiscated his film. But he didn't get the first film, which Cliff had stuffed in his boot.

Another time, during a riot in a maximum security prison, one of our photographers used his climbing spikes to ascend a huge tree across the street from the prison and shot the first photos of the riot from his perch above the 20-foot-high wall. He also had taken a long rope to haul up the cameras from other photographers and took identical shots, but on THEIR films. The gesture was much appreciated.

Today CNN will likely have helicopters above the doomed cruise liner and a host of spokesmen and analysts looking at every conceivable aspect of the sinking, which is what the television medium excels at. But the story broke first on the internet, likely by an Italian print journalist.

--BAS

How to fill up a Kindle with one book

A charge of massive fraud against a researcher at the University of Connecticut who claimed there were substantial health benefits to drinking red wine has caused the ship to hit the sand. Here's the nub of it.

"The investigation of Dr. Das’s work began in January 2009, two weeks after the university received an anonymous allegation about research irregularities in his laboratory. A special review board headed by Dr. Kent Morest of the University of Connecticut has now produced a 60,000-page report, which has been forwarded to the Office of Research Integrity, a federal agency that investigates fraud by researchers who receive government grants."

Who in all of creation could read (or even lift) this mega-document? By way of comparison, the Warren Commission Report on the assassination of President Kennedy was 888 pages in length.

--BAS

Has the dormant Cold War morphed into a Vacuum War?

WHAT TO MAKE OF THIS? AN ARTICLE IN today's New York Times suggests some high-ranking Russians are claiming the United States may have had a hand in the failure of a science satellite launched last year and which is about to fall out of obit and crash to Earth in the next few days.

According to NYT reporter Andrew Cramer, "a retired commander of Russia's missile warning system had speculated in November that strong radar signals from installations in Alaska might have damaged the spacecraft." According to Cramer, another Russian, director of the Russian space agency Vladimir Popovkin, said originally that a faulty navigational component might be to blame for the failed launch. Now Popovkin suggests outside forces might have had a hand in the flawed launch. “We don’t want to accuse anybody, but there are very powerful devices that can influence spacecraft now,” Popovkin said in an interview. “The possibility they were used cannot be ruled out.”

The NYT article says Mr. Popovkin did not directly implicate the United States. But he said “the frequent failure of our space launches, which occur at a time when they are flying over the part of Earth not visible from Russia, where we do not see the spacecraft and do not receive telemetric information, are not clear to us,” an apparent reference to the Americas.

The mission was to send a scientific payload to Mars, where a satellite would circle the planet's moon Phobos, land to pick up soil samples and then return to Earth. There doesn't seem to be an obvious reason why anyone would want to interfere with this mission and in fact the U.S. and USSR have been cooperating for some time on space ventures.

In a somewhat related story, the United States is asking nations planning to land on the Moon in the coming decades to keep their astronauts at least 75 yards from the Apollo 11 and 17 lunar landers, claiming that the sites are of immense historical significance. A similar request was made in the years after the sinking of the Titanic, but after the doomed super liner was located, a lot of artifacts have been picked up and can be purchased if one is so inclined and has the money. Which makes one wonder what the golf ball would be worth that Astronaut Alan Sheppard hit (almost falling down in doing so) while walking on the Moon? Since it supposedly travelled 2,400 feet, it would be well outside the "historically significant" zone.

--BAS

Apropos Of Nothing Department: A factoid I came across (and found hard to believe) that Apollo 13 was launched at 12:13 (13:13 CST) and the accident which doomed the mission happened on April 13 is true.

My life didn't flash before my eyes...we were going too fast for that

MY FIRST ROOMMATE WAS ONE OF THE STRANGEST DUDES I ever met and the first of several roomies who didn't enjoy my "coming of age" celebrations as much as I and quickly bailed out. Nonetheless I learned a lot from the guy everybody called "Jazzbo", not the least of which was an early appreciation for jazz.

His girlfriend Helen was an odd but pretty, willowy wisp who once confided that Jazzbo "likes girls with big cans", a structural feature in which she had major shortcomings.

My first job at age 19 was reporting for a highly-regarded newspaper and a man of my new stature needed a car. So I ponyed up $500 for a '55 Pontiac which I shared with a huge stuffed tiger's head, propped up in the passenger's seat so it could see out the window. I also held the receiver of a black rotary dial telephone to my ear when in stop-and-go traffic to underscore my importance.

Jazzbo also bought a car while we shared quarters although I can no longer recall the make. It was a European sports car build right on the ground and featured a long, rounded nacelle which housed an ominous dirty, black and smelly engine. It was Jazz's first car and he had absolutely no idea how to tame the beast. That became abundantly clear the night he was screaming down the 401, the only four-lane highway anywhere near town, well in excess of the speed limit and probably somewhat under the influence.

I was cowering in the passenger seat, my butt inches above the asphalt and my senses overwhelmed by partially burned hydrocarbons, thunderous noise and vertigo, and it got much worse when Jazz lost control of the car and skidded into the grassy median. Miraculously after the momentum bled off in a series of thumps and lurches, the car came to a rest facing the right way and with no visible damage.

Jazzbo sold the car a few weeks later and as far as I know, never owned another. He eventually married Helen and when I visited the couple some years later in Toronto they lived in a house within 50 yards of a bus stop.

In addition to the memories, I have to thank him for introducing me to Meade Lux Lewis, Dizzy Gillespie, Ornette Coleman and Billie Holliday among others. I've also long-since forgiven him for sticking an entire drawer-full of forks and knives in an old painting my grandmother had given me. To be honest, I really didn't like it anyway.

--BAS

FINALLY GETTING AROUND TO MAKING A SLIDE SHOW of a recent trip to Valley of Fire near Las Vegas. Click on the photo and when the slides appear, click on the first slide and look at the top, right, for the slide show option. Enjoy!

--BAS

This may sound a little far-fetched, but lend me an ear

FRED ROSS ALWAYS HAD A HAT-FULL OF FUNNY STORIES from his days at the Toronto Star and I recall one which is germane to today.

Fred worked with a legendary Yugoslavian photographer named Boris whose photography was superb but his English no so.... According to Fred, Boris had a habit of wishing, from time to time, his colleagues a "Happy New Year", even if it was July or October. Just a quirk, maybe, or perhaps he thought it was funny.

Boris met another Star staffer one time on Dec. 31 and by coincidence wished his friend a Happy New Year on the day it was OK to do so. Except in his broken English it sounded like "Happen You Ear?" The guy, who had only one ear, candidly replied: "Oh, a horse bit it off."

--BAS

"We are all prisoners here, of our own device"

AS I MENTIONED IN HERE BEFORE, I FOOLISHLY SIGNED up for Facebook a long time ago when I was younger and more foolish than I am now. I didn't bother to read the fine print (who did back then?) but soon came to regret getting involved.

Although it took some doing, I found out how to permanently delete my account. But, like Hotel California, "you can check out any time you like, but you can never leave". The fine print I didn't bother to read says even if you permanently delete your account, the information you were dumb enough to put in your profile can and will be used by Facebook as the company sees fit.

Yesterday I was talking to someone I know who was sure her Facebook account had been hacked. So, to today. I get an email from Facebook saying my account has been reactivated. Swell. Bloody swell. After much thrashing, as well as numerous password changes, up popped my old but recently reactivated account with a long column of photos of people I know and many I don't wanting to be my friend.

Those who know me are already my friends (well, most of them are) and I DON'T NEED ANY MORE. I permanently deleted the regrettable account for the second time. I'm sure Mark Zuckerberg had just been informed that my old account had been reactivated when another note was slipped to him telling him I deleted it AGAIN.

I stabbed it with my steely knife, but I just can't kill the beast.

--BAS

BTW,  although I was dumb to join Facebook, I used a fictitious name and have no personal information in the associated profile. Also, title of this blog and italicized lyrics are from "Hotel California" by the Eagles. What a great fit, too.

Limericks R Us

There once was a nutcase named Baer
Who had a sex change on a dare.
But the surgeon got tired
and then he got fired
And now Baer's both Sonny and Cher.


There was a young lady named Bright
whose speed was much faster than light.
She went out one day
in a relative way
and came back on the previous night.

--BAS

Note...first one is mine; the other is famous and much viewed by physicists.

A guy who has too much time on his hands, and makes it pay

SPEAKING OF BARCODES, AS WE WERE IN THE PIECE IMMEDIATELY below this one, a laser-eyed Leave Only Footprints groupie emailed the following note: "Your BC blog didn't even scratch the surface. Google barcode art and see what's really going on. Consider yourself pwned."

I did and he's right!!! Wow. First thing I came across was the website of a guy named Scott Blake who created a huge portrait of Elvis (among others) using only the barcodes from his CDs. What's even neater is, using a scanner, reading one of the barcodes plays an Elvis song from the relevant CD. The barcode Elvis portrait now hangs in Ripley's Believe It Or Not in San Fran. (The link to see the video is below, but you'll have to wait...you aren't getting away from here that easily!!!)

Scott explains another piece he put together:

"I created a portrait of Gary Vaynerchuk using the barcodes from bottles of wine he drank on his video blog (Wine Library TV.) I skewed the barcodes to accentuate his smile and out going personality, as well as to reference the curved shape of a wine bottle. Scan a barcode and the interface plays a video clip of Gary reviewing the wine where that barcode comes from."

There's also lots of neat individual barcodes, if anyone is interested, on the internet, two of which I included here.  Anyway, that's enough about barcodes for now. You're on your pwn. 

The link to the Elvis video:
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KHQaJXi-rYY

The link to the Vaynerchuk video is here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9RwC1D0TKXg

--BAS

Note: For those who haven't yet been "pwned", it's what hunt-and-peck computer typists mistakenly type when they mean "owned". And it will be in the dictionary before you know it, since the computer literati now use the term pwned rather than owned to prove they're 'with it'. :-)

Amaze and bore your friends: Read bar codes at the next party you attend.

EVERYTHING HAS A BAR CODE THESE DAYS, AND IT WON'T BE long before humans do too. But did you ever wonder what those lines and spaces mean?

Numeric Code 39 Bar Code

We're about to tell you. One of the oldest and most common bar codes is known as Numeric Code 39 (or Code 3 of 9) which is just binary code. Here's all you need to know to read it. A thin black line is a 0; a thick black line is a 1; a thin white space is a separator and a wide white space is a dash. Oh, you might also need a magnifying glass.

Each 39 bar code begins and ends with markers to tell a scanner if the code is right side up or upside down.

The number 0 is represented by: thin line, separator, thin line, wide space, thick line, separator, thick line, separator, thin line, which produces 00-110.

Here are all the numbers:

0=00-110
1=10-001
2=01-001
3=11-000
4=00-101
5=10-100
6=01-100
7=00-011
8=10-010
9=01-010

Matrix QR bar code

Most of the newest cell phones can read bar codes, including the widely-used UPC codes and the newest matrix type QR codes which are those square boxes full of square "crumbs" (photo at right). If you scan one of these with your cell phone, you'll get a lot of information including URLs to web sites.

There are even companies which will create your own personalized bar code. Those disconcerted by how much Facebook knows about them will be really ticked off when mandatory bar codes on their foreheads are in place.

--BAS

SPOILER: Anyone brave enough to tackle the 39 code at the top on your computer monitor will find it's 8675309, with the first five lines and five spaces representing the opening marker. Ditto for the last marker. To figure it out, I downloaded that code, enlarged it and printed it out to make it easier to read.

All we want for Christmas is three wise men

<b>THE LEAVE ONLY FOOTPRINTS STAFF HAS SCATTERED TO THE WINDS to celebrate Christmas with their families, leaving the interns to cobble together a column for today. And what better way than to borrow some quotes which are all better than anything we could ever dream up?--The Interns.

"Let's all be naughty and save Santa the trip."--Gary Allan.

"Tinsel is really snakes' mirrors."--Stephen Wright.

"One thing nice about Christmas is you can make people forget about the past with a present."--Author unknown.

"Christmas itselt may be called into question. If carried too far it creates indigestion."--Ralph Burgengren.

"I once bought my kids a set of batteries with a note on it saying toys not included."--Bernard Manning.

 

"About all you can do is dream about a white Christmas, for it seems like it leaves most of us in the red."--Author unknown.

"I wish we could put up some of the Christmas spirit in jars and open a jar of it every month."--Harlan Miller.

"In the old days, it was not called the Holiday Season; the Christians called it 'Christmas' and went to church; the Jews called it 'Hanukkah' and went to synagogue; the atheists went to parties and drank. People passing each other on the street would say 'Merry Christmas!' or 'Happy Hanukkah!' or (to the atheists) 'Look out for the wall!'--Dave Barry.

"Next to a circus there ain't nothing that packs up and tears out faster than the Christmas spirit."--Kin Hubbard.

"The Supreme Court has ruled that they cannot have a nativity scene in Washington, D.C. This wasn't for any religious reasons. They couldn't find three wise men and a virgin."--Jay Leno.

"Roses are reddish
Violets are bluish
If it weren't for Christmas
We'd all be Jewish."--Benny Hill.

Toss a few wee drams and toast the day. --BAS

You will be missed, Kim, but for all the wrong reasons

FACTS YOU MIGHT NOT KNOW ABOUT THE THE LATE LAMENTED LOOPY LEADER KIM JONG-IL, head Munchkin in North Korea, Land of the Little People.

Kim played golf only once. He reportedly shot a 38-under-par 34, including 11 holes-in-one. That would mean he fired an equally remarkable 23 on the 7 holes he didn't ace. His memorable round was witnessed by 17 security guards and reported by the state news agency.

Kim had a South Korean film producer and his actress wife kidnapped to "revitalize"  the north's film industry. While held captive, the two "guests" cranked out seven movies.

The dictator loved Bordeaux, Burgandy and especially the famous cognac Hennessy, of which he reportedly purchased $800,000 worth every year.

According to his biography, the Kim-Meister composed six operas and enjoyed staging musicals.

His same biography claims Kim was born in a log cabin on top of North Korea's highest mountain. The event was hearlded by a double rainbow and a bright star in the sky.

His signature song was "No Motherland Without You". Select lyrics include "We cannot exist without you, Comrade Kim Jong-il." Citizens of Pyongyang got to know the words by heart as Kim had the song blaring from loudspeakers.

The North American Hallowe'en costume industry made a fortune selling Lim Jong-il adult costumes which included a genuine grey jacket, high quality latex sculpted mask and real machete.

The Dear Leader claimed he wrote 1,500 books in three years, although Gulliver's Travels was not one of them.

With the passing of ol' Kim, the writers for Leno, Letterman, Kilborn, O'Brien et al are going to have to get off their duffs and find some new material.

--BAS

(Thanks for the idea, Peter).

Caffine addiction: Are there grounds for a revolt?

THERE'S A BULLY IN THE HOUSE, AND IT needs attention. NOW. Five beeps means the new Cuisinart coffee maker has finished brewing another pot. (Maybe.) As I was writing the previous sentence, ominous knocks began to emanate from the sinister, gleaming aluminum ediface in which coffee grounds are converted into lifeblood. (Or not.) Better check it out.

Back. Wiggling the coffee pot, still housed in its cradle, stopped the crunking sound but I didn't dare open the reactor lid in case a core meltdown was in progress. The Big C could be demanding a new water filter. Maybe it wants one of the myrad of impossibly hard to see settings by which the process is controlled, tweaked. Did I use too much water or too little coffee?

I'm sure pilots flying one of the new F-35s have a checklist strapped to their wrists so they miss no steps in taking off. Cuisinart doesn't provide one for its DCC1200 but really should.

Closely following the instructions a couple of nights ago to brew up a pot while we were sleeping produced nothing. After manually firing up the machine, it gurgled contentedly through its cycle. It sounded like the infernal strong-boss was chuckling.

The machine stands so high on the counter that, with a dim light on at three ayem, one can't tell if the coffee grounds basket's in place or not. When the basket IS in place, which one would ASS U ME it should be, super-heated water washes through five scoops of recently ground coffee and into the pot below. When the basket's on the counter over yonder, drying from a recent bath, the coffee grounds are sluiced right through, clogging up the entry port into the carafe below and spilling all over the place in a monumental tsunami.

The Cuisinart's a newcomer to the kitchen and maybe I'll warm up to it. But life was much simpler back in the days when you dropped a quarter into a machine and your coffee, such as it was, was served up in a classy, waxy cardboard cup.

--BAS

A threat to McDonalds it's not, but Five Guys is one frantic place to eat

OUR FRIEND MARSHA WAS TELLING US ABOUT A NEW hamburger outlet called Five Guys soon to open nearby. The next day we happened upon that very place, already open and packed to the rafters with customers.

To call it a fast-food hamburg joint would be misleading because each burger and dog is prepared from scratch right before your eyes and although there were 12 people grilling and prepping orders, the wait was 15 minutes. We watched in amazement at how organized the process is, although the loud rock music and milling customers (most homing in on the huge box of free shelling peanuts) lent the appearance of chaos. The young employees who make it all happen work their buns off, so to speak, and seem to enjoy their work.

The burgers were superb, the Cajun fries were too spicy to finish and the price was steep, but we'll go back another time, although NOT at lunch or dinner hour. The Five Guys business model just goes to show people will pay a premium for tasty food.

--BAS

Joy to the world, this Christmas lights bus tour is almost over

CIRCUMSTANCES COMPLETELY BEYOND MY CONTROL LAST NIGHT brought me face to face with the lyrics to, among other hymns, 'Joy To The World'. I've heard that traditional Christmas carol hundreds of times over the years, but never bothered to listen to the words beyond "Joy to the world, the Lord has come."

We were on a packed bus doing a Christmas lights tour (my first and last-ever such tour, BTW) and the promised but dreaded carol singalong burst forth from 56 pairs of lips when the drop-down DVD screens fired up. For those of us who didn't know the words, they helpfully scrolled across the screens (photo, top) over photos of old manger paintings etc etc, as the heavenly refrains blared out. Here are the lyrics, if you don't already know them by heart.

Joy to the world, the Lord is come!

Let earth receive her King;

Let every heart prepare Him room,

And Heaven and nature sing,

And Heaven and nature sing,

And Heaven, and Heaven, and nature sing.

Joy to the world, the Savior reigns!

Let men their songs employ;

While fields and floods, rocks, hills and plains

Repeat the sounding joy,

Repeat the sounding joy,

Repeat, repeat, the sounding joy.

No more let sins and sorrows grow,

Nor thorns infest the ground;

He comes to make His blessings flow

Far as the curse is found,

Far as the curse is found,

Far as, far as, the curse is found.

He rules the world with truth and grace,

And makes the nations prove

The glories of His righteousness,

And wonders of His love,

And wonders of His love,

And wonders, wonders, of His love.

Wow!!! "No more let sins and sorrows grow, nor thorns infest the ground." Here's how another line in the carol sounds: "Re pee eat, re pee eee eat, the sounding joy." Wow!!!

Wikipedia says Joy TTW, based on Psalm 98 in the Bible, was written in 1719 by British hymn-meister Isaac Watts. I get the feeling people actually talked like they wrote back in those days. You can almost hear Isaac, as he ducks under the low stone header and enters his smoke-filled cottage, yelling at his wife: "Dids't thou not pluck the thorns from the Earth's brow this morrow? Forsooth, yon hills will repeat my sounding anger if thou neglecteth thy duty an instant longer."

Away In A Manger has a doozie too:

The cattle are lowing

The poor Baby wakes

But little Lord Jesus

No crying He makes

Wow.

Most irrevelently, I can say a Christmas song (certainly not a hymn and not heard a lot these days) which repeats MY sounding joy is "Santa Got Run Over By A Reindeer."

--BAS

Image: Adoration of the shepherds of newborn Jesus. Details from a 1600s painting by Guido Reni, an Italian painter and etcher of high-Baroque style.ni (1575-1642), an Italian painter, draughtsman and etcher of high-Baroque s