Zombie survival ball

Kiss of Death

Memento Mori sculpture from Barcelon'a Poblenou cemetary

The ephitaph bears part of a poem by Jacint Verdaguer:
"And his young heart can not help'
in his veins the blood stops and freezes
and encouragement lost faith embraces
fall felling the kiss of death."

Spherical Aircraft

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=pF0uLnMoQZA

Yoram Bauman economic humor

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=cW9dxFrAk-I

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TypWtZYLCF8&feature=player_detailpage&list=UUWNVDDLiexqiHNULPQ3kGxg

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pKBKLeTZbM4&feature=player_detailpage&list=UUWNVDDLiexqiHNULPQ3kGxg

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zkUzU1Ce7rQ&feature=player_detailpage&list=UUWNVDDLiexqiHNULPQ3kGxg

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9utlDdLhaTU&feature=player_detailpage&list=UUWNVDDLiexqiHNULPQ3kGxg

http://www.youtube.com/watch?list=UUWNVDDLiexqiHNULPQ3kGxg&feature=player_detailpage&v=yL_-1d9OSdk

Patrick Rothfuss

A couple of months ago a co-worker suggested I read Patrick Rothfuss’ Kingkiller Chronicle’s. Currently there are published two books in the trilogy, and I suspect (and strongly hope) that there will be a follow-up trilogy. The two published books are “The Name of the Wind” and “The Wise Man’s Fear”

The books currently rate 4.4 and 4.1 stars respectively on Amazon. I think I agree with the overall ratings.

Patrick Rothfuss reminds me a bit of Tolkien, he is an English professor with an obvious gift for weaving the written word into delightful prose.  I think that Name of the Wind is a one of the best books to come along since Harry Potter. Wise Man’s fears is a little weaker, a bit to detailed in its descriptions which some people seem to find tedious, but still I love the book.

What I particularly love is that while the books are a well written ‘coming to age’ story they are laced with tones of truly great humorous and memorable quotes. For example:

Running with the Cons

I’ve always enjoyed the genre of story of the ‘noble’ criminal.  The thieves that have reformed and are using their talents for good or at least you can really like them as they use their talents for bad.  Examples such as Oceans Eleven, Leverage, Hustle, etc.

But watching the shows there is always the criminal patois going on that, while very cool, I just didn’t understand.  So I started to poke around and learn what some of it meant.

My first foray was to learn more about the basic types of confidence scams.  There is A LOT of different types of confidence scams, but here are some of the basic ones:

The Ponzi Scheme:

Fake investments.  The con-artist uses some of the money from new ‘investors’ to provide ‘dividends’ to the other investors to make them believe their investments are prospering.  Meanwhile the con-artist steals any of the money coming into the con that he doesn’t need to keep the marks convinced.

The Spanish Prisoner:

Advance fee fraud.  The con-artist tricks the mark into believing that a ‘modest’ investment now will result in a big payday down the road.  Unlike the Ponzi Scheme this is a take the money and run con not requiring the long-term commitment of a Ponzi scheme.

The False Samaritan:

The con-artist’s version of good cop, bad cop.  The “bad” artist runs an action on the mark and the “good” artist, acting as an innocent third-party, intervenes to ‘save’ the mark.  At basic levels this could be a simple mugging where the good artist scares away and recovers the stolen property in hopes of a reward.  More complex cons may use the False Samaritan to place the good artist into a position where the mark trusts or feels obligated to her to set up a larger con.

Dawn and Dusk

I love Dawn and Dusk, they are wonderful times of the day filled with strange and haunting colors and the anticipation of change.

Growing up in a town nestled in a wide valley between the Wasatch and Wellsville mountains, a vividly recall crisp autumn mornings walking to the school bus stop when the sun was not yet risen enough to warm the valley but had lit the clouds over the western mountains into brilliant shades of white, tangerine, auburn and orange in a pale azure sky.  Usually a bit of extra poignancy there because our schools colors were white, blue, and orange.

I also remember after Mount Saint Helen and the Yellowstone fire the awesome brilliance of the sunsets through the particulate laden skies.  Sunsets I’ve only seen rivaled when I lived in outside Phoenix Arizona and the late summer evening ‘monsoon’ winds would rush over the desert, wet clouds behind a huge baboob (the initial front wall of a dust storm) racing across the desert towards you as it’s lit into glorious colors by the setting sun.    

I was driving up I-15 along the Wasatch mountains today, after work in the late afternoon.  The mountains were gray except where they were capped with snow.  The snow was brilliant white in direct sun light and a greyish blue in the shadows.  The sky was so clean after the recent wind storms, lite blue but beginning to darken into the evening.  Clouds were scattered everywhere, also white in the sun but greyish in the shadowed side away from the sun.

Up close everything was so distinct.  The textures of the mountain and the clouds so vivid in the unusually clean air.  But further north, the further away you looked, the distance made it harder it distinguish and soon the mind began to misinterpret what it was seeing…

Grey mountains under white and blue/grey snow, under white and grey clouds in a blue/grey sky soon began to mix and the mind insisted that higher clouds, still brightly white in the setting sun, hovered over the mountains.  But these mountains with their white tops and grey bottoms where actually lower clouds, their undersides in shadow.  These ‘mountains’ confusingly floated above more clouds (actually  snow still in the sunlight) floating in the blue sky (the snow low enough to no longer be in the setting sunlight).

It was beautiful and confusing all mixed together.