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One Digger’s response to Katie Couric repeating on air the cliché that “There are no atheists in foxholes:

“There are no atheists in foxholes” isn’t an argument against atheism, it’s an argument against foxholes”
-James Morrow

Ouch.

(via Digg)

(Start from the bottom of the image)

It seems after Richard Branson emblazoned his brand new A340-500s tails, the longest commercial airplane in service, with the slogan “mine’s bigger than yours”, it’s now a competition to add humor to airline service. My pick? Virgin America’s Unicorn Chaser.

Ads Of the World

Left, Mahmud Hams/AFP-Getty Images; right, Adel Hana/AP

I recommend The Economist’s leader this week on the 40 years of the Six-Day War. An appropriate companion to the picture above.

NY Times

I just spent a couple of hours doing the rounds on Wikipedia, checking the watchlist and the projects I collaborate on. While I’m an avid Wikiholic, human beings are imperfect, and a collective of human beings is inherently a collection of imperfections. I want to point out a couple of examples of discussions which I believe illustrate the great and the not-so-great dynamics of conflict resolution on Wikipedia:

The Good

Gol Transportes Aéreos Flight 1907 – Article deals with the controversial crash of a fully-loaded Boeing 737 after colliding with a Embraer Legacy jet. The article’s editors managed to resolve sometimes charged discussions and nationalistic feelings and in the best tradition of “just the facts, ma’am”, created an article which provides a great amount of information while maintaining the all-hallowed neutral point of view. The article was eventually named a “Good Article”, making it one of the 2.200-or-so articles which meet those standards, out of the 1,8 million or so Wikipedia articles. (Disclaimer: I am one of those contributors, though most of the credit belongs elsewhere)

The Bad

Walther P22 – This was one of the firearms used by Seung-Hui Cho, the Virginia Tech massacre gunman. A controversy erupted over whether or not the incident should be mentioned in the firearm’s page. In the end, with no consensus, the mediation cabal stepped in and kind of “gave up” citing a lack of resources. Eventually, one of the participants in the discussion who was an administrator locked the page without mentioning the incident, with many challenging the existence of a consensus. Later I found out he actually owned a Walther P22, which makes me question his ability to be impartial in the matter.

The Ugly

Xeni Jardin – Yeah, and for an inane reason too. A huge argument erupted over whether or not there should be a link or mention to Xenisucks.com, a website which parodies Xeni’s contributions to BoingBoing. The consensus was perhaps the most asinine compromise I have ever seen: Keep the mention to as “XeniSucks.com”, but don’t link to it (IE: XeniSucks.com=Good, XeniSucks.com=Bad). In the immortal words of General McAuliffe, “Nuts!”

You may recall my Quite Interesting post on the Alvin submersible. The NY Times ran today an obituary for Harold Froehlich, who designed the Alvin back in the day, who died on May 19th at the age of 84. From the obit:

One of the Alvin’s most unexpected discoveries came to light in the Bahamas in 1967. The crew surfaced to find a swordfish attached to the submarine with its bill puncturing the vessel’s outer skin. The crew “arranged for a local restaurant to cut it up, and they had it for dinner that night,” Mr. Froehlich recalled in an interview in 2003.

“It was a fairly good-sized one, too,” he said.

NY Times Obit

What do the roles of a U-Boat Captain, Arnold Schwarzenegger and a Baron named “Wolfgang von Wolfhaus” have in common? Jürgen Prochnow!

Best known for his groundbreaking role as the Captain Henrich Lehmann-Willenbrock in Das Boot, Prochnow has oscillated between some really good productions such as The English Patient and Dune to a questionable string of made-for-TV movies. He is, however, one of those guys that immediately brings either an enormous amount of stress or a calamitous calm. Which is really to say that he plays mostly two characters with minor variations: either he’s playing a modified Das Boot captain under attack, stressed out of his mind, or a modified Das Boot Captain with a mystery look bordering on depression. Interestingly enough, the former seems to be most prevalent in his American ventures, while the latter in the German ones.

This last point is best demonstrated by the name of his unofficial US fan club: The Jürgen Prochnow Watchdog Society Fan Club, whose official motto is: “ALAAAAAAAAAAARM”. In Germany, however, he’s often referred to as “Das Pokerface”

As a side note, Prochnow, along with Clive Owen and a couple of others, appeared in one of my favorite computer games ever–Privateer II:The Darkening.

Watch him in: Das Boot (the original, 4 1/2 hour uncut TV version), Dune, The English Patient, Wing Commander (oh c’mon, I’m a gaming nerd–give me a break. And Saffron Burrows ain’t all bad either.)

Don’t bother with: Judge Dredd (“I AM THE LAW”–classic!), Beverly Hills Cop II, Anything with “(TV)” next to the entry on his IMDb page.

When I went to South Africa in 2002, I witnessed what I’m told is a once-in-a-lifetime event: a pack of endangered African wild dogs taking down an Impala in the wild. Watching that scene produced two responses for me: I was immediately okay with eating other animals, seeing with my own eyes what a death in the wild was really like, and I was also abjectly against unnecessary cruelty against animals. In short, I’m okay with being a carnivore, as long as the death can be caused with less trauma than it would otherwise occur in the wild.

When I see this story by Sky News on China’s treatment of animals, I wish I could dismiss this as anecdotal or even occasionally endemic. But things like bile bears, or bears with catheters stuck in their gallbladders and “milked” for Chinese medicine make me enraged that this might not only be pervasive, but systemic.

I don’t have a problem with purposeful animal death. I often poke fun at my mother (an ASPCA member and volunteer) that until she starts the “Save the Lab Rat Foundation” and start worrying about the not-so-cute animals, I can’t support her beliefs. But even then, it’s one thing if you’re live feeding tigers to acclimate the animal prior to reintroduction to the wild–doing it for sport is sickening and reminds me of Bill Maher’s assertion that not all cultures are equal.

Chinese Zoo Feeding – Sky News

You Only Live Twice is my second-favorite Bond movie (after Thunderball, of course). Not only does it have Ken Wallis‘ “Little Nellie” in amazing aerial sequences, but also features what is in my view yet another under-appreciated actor, Donald Pleasence (better known for his roles in THX1138 and The Great Escape), as Ernst Stavro Blofeld.

And who was the writer for this action-packed, starred explosive extravaganza? None other than Roald Dahl, author of Mathilda, Charlie & The Chocolate Factory and other childrens’ books.

The film is not without infamy, however. Unfortunately, we have to credit the movie’s homonymous main theme as providing the sample for the Robbie Williams single “Millenium”, which proved to be the tipping point for his solo career in 1998.

Barrel roll in a Dash-80 (the precursor to the Boeing 707)

My eyes water every time I see it… “Tex” was part of the X-1 program with Chuck Yeager and Bob Hoover, the three men that I consider the best test pilots in history. All three men went on to make their own marks in the history of aviation.

Here’s Bob Hoover showing how to pour a drink:

COME ON VALVE, WHAT’S THE HOLD-UP? THIS WAS SUPPOSED TO BE MY CHRISTMAS PRESENT!

And to think that I got my start in online gaming playing QuakeWorld Team Fortress 1 on a 14.4k modem and a Voodoo 1. I was also there to bear witness to the first ever Machinima, Diary of a Camper. Man I’m getting old. Look at how things have changed…

This was TF1:

And this is TF2: