Adam talks about poker.

An interview with Kurt Anderson, if that's your sort of thing.

A Pilot Explains the Mystery You've Been Dying to Know

How do pilots get along with gay flight attendants? I would expect that many macho (often ex-military) pilots would be prone to disrespect and perhaps mistreat male cabin attendants who exhibit effeminacy. And what about gay (and lesbian) pilots? Any queers in the cockpit?

Well, pilot/flight attendant interaction, regardless of personalities or sexual orientations, tends to be businesslike and terse these days. Cockpit and cabin crews often stay in separate hotels, for instance.

But to answer the question, the word I'd go with is cordial. Cordial doesn't always mean friendly, exactly, but for the most part the interplay is very professional and free of hostility. How much of this is due to fear of litigation or getting fired, etc., is open to debate, but even that counts for something. I have never once seen or heard a pilot openly mistreat a male flight attendant. There's a degree of sarcasm and fun-poking behind the scenes, but while I don't suppose that's terribly surprising, it's a lot more tame than you'd expect. Many pilots, even the most macho Republicans, can be surprisingly open minded and easygoing. Perhaps working closely with gay co-workers over an extended period of time breaks down ingrained stereotypes.

As for gay pilots, I've worked with at least three, including a former military flier.

I've also been acquainted with three male flight attendants who eventually became airline pilots. Interestingly, none were gay as far as I know. One of them, married with kids, was killed in the crash of a cargo plane a few years ago.

NEWSFLASH

North Korea has nuclear weapons. Or, they have "glowing tractor carcass," depending on who's doing the translating.

A Barrage of Dennis Miller Jokes

I read a story about a woman who just had her 23 child. Hey, lady, it's a vagina, not a clown car.


When were nuclear weapons taken off the table; what is this, our mother's good china syndrome?


Here's a thought: If we killed all the lawyers, we wouldn't have adequate representation in the eyes of the court.


I was home schooled, oddly enough at a branch campus.


I think alcholoism is a disease. It's a great fucking disease. Even when you have a relapse, it's kind of fun.


You never know why the Germans don't sign on. Whether they agree with the war or if it's not on a grand enough scale for them.


You only have to watch one UN session and it makes you want to prescribe ritalin to a glacier.


More here

The Kindness of Strangers

Shame on you people! "New York may not have ranked lowest in our global study, as it had in our earlier tests of helpful acts in various U.S. cities, but it came close. Overall, New Yorkers placed 22nd in our list of 23. They ranked 22nd on tests of whether people would retrieve a dropped pen and of whether they would assist someone with a hurt leg. They came out a little below the average (13th) when it came to helping a blind person to cross the street."

Will You Be Disintermediated?

Baby, get in my time machine. You in the thick plastic frames and royal blue Hugo Boss button-down. And you, in the smart Pashmina and Manolo slides. Trip with me, baby. Its 1999. Slip that Garbage CD right into my CD-ROM slot, kick that 808 bass synth and let's ease on downtown. No time to waste. Too many unsticky sites to work over so they garner eyeballs like sparkle on Courtney Pulitzer's cheekbones. Too much media to do. Too much future to figure. So much to conquer. Trip with me, baby. Its 1999.

Denmark Uber Extra Cheese

In other Danish pizza news, herring is now a vegetable. Film at 11.

This place sounds nice, but I prefer Stick-shift Pizza 4-Barrel Burnout myself.

Get a Room, You Two

The ideological tensions between the US State Department and the Pentagon are escalating into a single-malt media brannigan. One day after Newt Gingrich tore State a new one from the podium at the American Enterprise Instutute for "diplomatic failure" in dealing with Iraq, and for being too cozy with dictators, unnamed State sources laid into "some administration officials" (i.e., Defense neocons) for shortsighting Iraqi shiites' ability to organize after Saadam's overthrow. In other words, to Neocons like Gingrich, the "dips" at State couldn't pave a footpath in Afghanistan without a 1,000-page white paper and a sip of aquavit, while to Powell and the fellows from State, the rec-room fratboys in Defense couldn't stir diplomats' Nescafe in local matters of consequence. Stay tuned, I hear Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Armitage are going to settle the score over a game of Rock, Paper, Scissors.

Recipe for Car Power: Heat Vegetable Oil, Flip Switch and Go

I know I benefit from oil and cars and all that stuff, but c'mon, can't auto manufacturers et al. get themselves in gear. Clearly there are other ways to power a vehicle.

Subway Fare Hike May Never Have Been Necessary

Man, this ticks me off to just about no end and proves why governments are utterly useless and stupifingly dumb:

"A state audit has concluded that the Metropolitan Transportation Authority secretly shifted hundreds of millions of dollars in surplus money to create the appearance of a huge deficit in 2003, misleading transit riders about the need for a fare increase this year, according to officials involved in preparing the audit.... The internal books, which the comptroller received after issuing subpoenas, showed that a substantial surplus in 2002 could have been used to shore up budget problems this year and would actually have left a small surplus, enough to put off a fare increase." (NY Times)

S&M Goes Mainstream with "Mr. Personality"

Doesn't anyone else see the kinky side to this? I'm surprised this is flying in the face of good ole fashion American churchgoers' beliefs. Reminds me of the Gimp from Pulp Fiction.

I Love Books

Go to the Friday, April 25, event at Galapagos in order so that you can buy To Ruhleben and Back from the Collins Library.

Don't Mess with Mesopotamia

Finally, in the midst of negative punditry on why democracy won't fly in Iraq, cautious optimism from contrarian Senatorial types about why it'll take years, and a classified cold shower by the US State Department, here's an article in The Australian that offers a compelling argument for why and how democracy can flourish in postwar Iraq. Of course, the author, an Iraqi historian, had to make a Gilgameshian trek back to 3,500 B.C. to find a workable model for how Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds can play all nice and governmental-like. But what the heck, it's better than nothing.

300 Reasons to Love the Simpsons

Take your time, you need to savor these.

Looking for a Few Good Bricklayers

The Freemasons are looking for new recruits. Let's infiltrate them and write a "60 Minutes" expose.

Being Luddite Just for the Sake of It

A lot is being written and about this Honda ad, in which they built a Rube Goldberg-type thing (think the old game Moustrap). People are fawning over the fact that it was done without computer manipulation – that it was done IRL (i.e., in real life). But when it’s possible to re-create this thing in half the time with a computer, why is anyone amazed?

While it’s nice that they took the time to build a real scenario, I just wonder to myself, “If computers can do this so well that I wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between computer-made and real life, who cares which way it was done? They might as well have just done it the cheap and quick way – the result would be just as good.” Am I too much a product of the digital age? I don’t think so.

Sprinkle, Sprinkle Little Pole

This is a very dumb article about a Polish tradition of sprinking water or perfume on friends. But, at least it has a cool name: Smigus Dyngus.
Happy Smigus Dyngus day to you all!

Books to Be Read

I just read "The Grand Complication," a potboiler about a fancy watch stolen from a museum. Now there is this runaway best seller: The Da Vinci Code. Suddenly, I am really into these books that, as the NY Times says about the author, "Mr. Brown, a former English teacher at Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire, is a practitioner of what might be called the encyclopedia school of popular fiction perfected by authors like Arthur Hailey and Patricia Cornwell, who mix potboiler plots with arcane facts about the hotel industry or forensic medicine."