November 8th, 2009

cat helmet

"V"

I just saw the pilot of the new series "V".
The aliens are going to offer universal health care! Oh No!
Really, if aliens arrived like that a lot of the SF&F community would be like "Wow! Cool Space Ships!" but some of them would be like "Watch out. Remember 'To Serve Man'".
goddess and god

"Flash Forward" and "The Last Lecture"

A new development in TV show "Flash Forward" is suicide clubs for people who didn't have visions of the future. The idea is that if one knows one will be dead by a certain date one ceases to care when or how one will die. Which is a stupid idea. Even today people find out that they have a limited time left to live, and most of them don't try to make that time shorter.

Which brings me to The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch. He was a man who found out he had just months to live and decided to use that time to leave a message for his children.

We are all going to die. Any one can die at any time. And we all know that. I should think it would be more likely that people who did have visions of a specific time in the future would take more risks, because they know that they will not die or get seriously injured before that time. Which was demonstrated in the episode by the FBI agent who played Russian Roulette because he had had a vision and knew he wouldn't die.
Cogito Ergo Nom

Tamale Day!

I finally made some Tamales!

I was worried that I would run out of filling or corn husks before I ran out of corn dough. But I ran out of corn dough first. One pound of meat filling was enough for 4 cups corn dough, and I still have corn husks left. The meat tamales are steaming in the Asian steamer my mom gave me.

I made up a batch of cinnamon honey raisin corn dough for the rest of the husks when the first batch is done. I got the idea from The Art of Mexican Cooking by Diana Kennedy.