PLAUSIBLE? ANY OF IT?

I have hardly been keeping up with all this Pat Tillman business, (here’s a report if your not up to speed either) but am I to understand from the word “fratricide” in the story means that, rather than being accidentally killed by “friendly fire”, he was actually fragged by his own men because he was a gun-ho barking-crazy psycho and fatally dangerous to anyone close to him? Or is that just my cynical assumption.

And meanwhile, as I posted the above, this appeared in my in-box. “TOKYO — A health ministry affiliate has received 23 reports of antiviral drug Tamiflu causing neuropsychiatric disorders in children aged under 10 such as hallucinations, depressed consciousness or delirium." Now wasn’t this junk being pumped up by the pharmaceutical companies as their first line of defense against H5N1 Avian Flu? I never did trust it. Like Pat Tillman’s unfortunate death, it just seemed so overhyped.

The secret word is Skepticism

THIS BLOG IS STILL PROTECTED BY...

NEWTON HAS AN UPDATE

The deaths supposedly caused by catfood that we were all worrying about last Monday have been attributed to rat poison, although how exactly is not clear. For what there is of the story...

BRITS TAKE SMALL STEP TO DRUG SANITY

Aeswiren sends us the following report from the BBC…
"The drug classification system in the UK is not "fit for purpose" and should be scrapped, scientists have said. They have drawn up an alternative system which they argue more accurately reflects the harm that drugs do. The new ranking system places alcohol and tobacco in the upper half of the league table, ahead of cannabis and several Class A drugs such as ecstasy. The study, published in The Lancet, has been welcomed by a team reviewing drug research for the government. The Academy of Medical Sciences group plans to put its recommendations to ministers in the autumn."

Rest of story…

The secret word is Benzodiazepine

BLATANT SELF PROMOTION (Nosferatu Division)

Earlier in the week (on Tuesday to be precise) we were discussing the arithmetic impossibility of vampires and I happened to mention Victor Renquist and posted a link to his Wikipedia entry (not written by me) but maybe I didn’t urge everyone sufficiently strongly, who hasn’t already gone out or online to buy The Renquist Quartet, to do so immediately starting with the first book – The Time of Feasting (left).

And when you’ve made the purchase, HCB poses some comments, all of which I think are brilliantly resolved in the Renquist novels. (Along with the problem of Nazi flying saucers and the whereabouts of the last Quaalude on the planet.)

“The vampire population is increasing in a geometric progression, and the population of humans is similarly decreasing -- and at that rate, the authors calculate, the entire human population would be transformed into vampires in only 30 months.”

HCB -- But you’d have to assume they were capable of traveling great distances because otherwise they'd entirely consume the local population in short order and starve (if they can in fact actually die) or tear each other to pieces. More likely they'd have the same effect as any lethal virus in a finite population, and like a contagious disease they'd have a much greater effect in bigger urban environments. There's also the native earth business to get around. I guess you could say they're land-locked.

“Am Legend that also became the Vincent Price movie The Last Man On Earth and was also the basis of The Omega Man with Charlton Heston”

HCB -- The new Will Smith version is set to release in Dec

HCB also provides a link to Hard Day’s Night Of The Living Dead

Larry "Bud' Melman -- RIP

A FAREWELL TO WASTE MANAGEMENT

In this week’s LA CityBeat I use up the space available for what I guess is my elegy on The Sopranos and how it is, in reality, a surviving product of the Bill Clinton 1990s.

The secret word is Bing! (or maybe Bah)

SPRING?

Our friend Yukiko has sent me a short poem known as "Waka" (a little longer form of Haiku) written the famous Japanese monk poet, Saigyo. Some of you will be aware why I post it here. Those who aren’t should just enjoy it.

Let me die in spring

under the cherry blossom,

let it be around

that full moon

of Kisaragi month

(Kisaragi is an ancient Japanese name for the month of March.)

VAMPIRES CAN'T EXIST

VICTOR RENQUIST WOULD NOT LIKE THIS ONE BIT. (Less in fact than he likes how he’s neither a graphic novel nor a major motion picture.)

“One of the most totally fun areas of publishing in recent years has been the emergence of books that probe the scientific bases of fictional universes. Among popular conclusions? Vampires can't exist. Why? Because they'd quickly depopulate the earth. To prove it, the scientists do some calculations by picking a random year in history -- 1600, specifically -- and imagining what would happen if one vampire suddenly appeared on earth. They assume, for the sake of argument, that a vampire needs to feed "only once a month", and that in the course of feeding, the vampire turns its victim into another vampire. They note that the global population of humans was 536,870,911 in the year 1600. They note that the global population of humans was 536,870,911 in the year 1600. Then the calculations begin. If a single vampire fed on a single human in the first month, this would create two vampires -- and decrease the human population by one, leaving it at 536,870,911 - 1 = 536,870,910. In the second month, those two vampires would each feed, transforming two people into vampires -- so you get four vampires and a human population of 536,870,911 - 3 = 536,870,908. So you can see where this is headed. The vampire population is increasing in a geometric progression, and the population of humans is similarly decreasing -- and at that rate, the authors calculate, the entire human population would be transformed into vampires in only 30 months. QED!”

For chapter and verse read Clive Thompson’s Collision Detection (also permanently linked on the right.)

All this arithmetic does, however, explain why so many once and future vampire authors like myself go such extreme trouble to make the conversion of a human to a vampire or nosferatu state much more complicated than one bite per customer. Also most of us knew that the whole idea of the exponential spread of Vampirism had been totally worked out in Richard Matheson’s novel I Am Legend that also became the Vincent Price movie The Last Man On Earth and was also the basis of The Omega Man with Charlton Heston (and a lot of guns.)

The secret words is Crypt

FOUR YEARS AND STILL COUNTING

How long, lawd, lawdy how long? Yes, indeed. How fucking long do we tolerate indefinite homicidal greed and stupidity? And how long do the questions remain merely rhetorical?

A NOTE FROM NEWTON

After last month's Purina dogfood panic we now have some serious and maybe fatal panics regarding various brands of cat food.

The secret word is Warning