PZ Myers Expelled from Expelled

Associate Prof and Biologist PZ Myers tried to see a screening of the anti-evolution smear-job/movie Expelled in the Twin Cities last night. He's in the movie, Ben Stein et al even thank him in the credits.

However, they apparently thought he was a threat of some sort. The producers kicked him out of line and he was threatened with arrest if he didn't leave immediately.

The funny thing? He was standing right next to his guest, who they didn't accost and kick out: Richard Dawkins. They let Dawkins and Myers' family in, but not him.

Here's a followup report after talking to the people who did get in. Sounds pretty awful, sounds like a total hack job:

"We laughed over the movie, which I hear is not only boring and poorly made, but is ludicrous in its dishonesty. Apparently, a standard tactic is to do lots of fast cuts between biologists like me or Dawkins or Eugenie Scott and shots of Nazi atrocities. It's all very ham-handed. The audience apparently ate it up, though."

Hopes? Dashed. Expectations? Unmet.

Oh, good gravy, that was horrible.

Somewhere beneath that HUGELY LOUD AND IRRITATING LAUGHTRACK, there might be some writing and maybe even some comedy.

I'm really disappointed. Rob Corddry is so damn funny, but this show is Teh Awful.

Lenny Clarke needs to fire his agent and get on a real show.

Final tip: naming your show "The Winner" when it sucks this badly? Easy fodder for entertainment scribes with long knives.

Quick home-baked tortilla chips

1. Acquire corn tortillas, preferably a low-fat version
2. Spray a cooking sheet with a couple spritzes of cooking oil (canola or olive)
3. Cut tortillas into triangles
4. Place tortilla triangles on cooking sheet in single layer
5. Spray or tortilla triangles with cooking oil
6. Cook at, oh, 400 F for about 8 minutes
7. Salt to taste

Amend as desired. You can also brush the oil on, of course. I haven't tried this with wheat tortillas, but I don't see why that wouldn't work.

Kill the Poor?

I remember when I was working at the grocery store and how some-but-not-all clerks would get pissed off at the choices that people on food stamps were making.

Thing was, they were making the same food choices. I know, because I bagged their groceries, too. It had nothing to do with age/health/whatever. They just didn't want someone *else* making those food choices, especially when on food stamps. "They should be buying healthier stuff," they'd say, then load up on chips and cookies at the end of their shift.

They didn't seem to have the same problem with WIC, however. I guess that's because WIC prescribes what people can buy.

They also would get really ticked off if the people on food stamps had a big car. "She's driving a Cadillac!" Yeah, a 25-year-old Caddy held together mostly by rust.

I guess it would have made them happier if the people on food stamps had been thrown in prison or something.

Stupid small-town jerks.

The Unknown Hazards of Free Stuff

A co-worker of mine at the college told me she once had to go to the bathroom -- quite badly -- and the maintenance crew was cleaning it at the time. Thinking that she couldn't make it to the distant second women's bathroom, she went back to her secluded interior office, locked the door, and peed in a gimme sports water bottle. Then, after the janitorial people were done, she discreetly emptied the bottle and threw it away in a lidded trashcan in the hallway.

Later, she says, one of the guys from the lab came by and showed her his Cool New Water Bottle that "some idiot had just tossed in the trash."

She congratulated him on his excellent trashcan diving skills and he went happily on his way.

Ninfa's Green Sauce (or something like it)

I decided to break out the Ninfa's sauce this weekend. My take is a little different than the "official recipe" that gets published in Houston papers every so often. That recipe (1) makes a really huge portion, (2) isn't spicy enough, and (3) has too much sour cream.

I use fat-free sour cream to cut down on some of the fat/calories. You don't have to do that. I play with the recipe depending on taste, so feel free to make it your own.

My version seems to have turned out pretty well. It hits the mouth creamy, you get a secondary taste of tomatillo and garlic, then a touch of capsaicin heat at the end. Good for dipping or as a topping. Excellent with chicken.

Here goes:

2 ripe avocados
2/3 lb tomatillos (6-8 small tomatillos or 4-6 medium)
2-3 cloves garlic, peeled
fresh cilantro to taste (2-3 or more sprigs)
2 jalapeños
1 serrano pepper (adds more heat)
8 oz fat-free sour cream

Remove the leaves from the tomatillos, wash off the sticky stuff. Put the garlic, peppers, and tomatillos in a small saucepan, cover with water and boil for 15 minutes. I sometimes (like today) take one of the peppers and a couple of the tomatillos and roast them (at oh, 400 degrees for 15 minutes) while the other ingredients are boiling. Roasting gives a little sweetness.

While the stuff is cooking, scoop the avocados into a blender, add cilantro, set aside.

Drain the water (keep it for cooking!), dump the tomatillos, garlic cloves, and peppers into the blender...you'll probably want to take the top stem off the peppers first. Leave the seeds and skin unless your stomach doesn't like them.

Blend everything smooth, then add the sour cream. Blend smooth again. It's usually a good idea to let it refrigerate for a hour or so, though best eaten at something near room temperature.

It will keep for a day or two in the fridge if you have leftovers. I wouldn't try to keep it beyond that, though.

Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip - Why the hate?

I wonder sometimes why the right-wingers are so pissed at Studio 60.

If you look at the characters, you've got the neocon wet-dream of what Hollywood is "really like": a cokehead producer who's a partner with an alcoholic, anti-Christian secular Jew, a pot-smoking black man pleading for "diversity", an ungrateful child who thinks his folks from the midwest are hopelessly hickified (and isn't he the same guy who flaunted the law in Nevada?), a network chief who has enough of a sexual history to nominate her for Whore of Babylon, etc etc.

The only character who's shown in a favorable light is the conservative Christian.

If this crowd were in one of the Left Behind books, they'd be talking about how "accurate" and everything it was, but since it's produced by Aaron Sorkin et al, It Must Be The Evil.

ST:TNG from the inside

Wil Wheaton points us to Diane Duane's blog, in which she describes her recollections of what happened with the script for "Where No One Has Gone Before".

She and Michael Reaves pitched a very different story than what was shown: Wesley's role was not as prominent, Kosinsky was not an asshole, the Traveller wasn't even in it.

Their script - highly thought of by the production crew - became a victim of crappy office politics and was extensively rewritten...by someone else.

Compare the real show (blogged on by Wil at TV Squid, er, Squad) to the second draft premise and the second draft outline.

Overall, a faskinating peek inside the world of television scriptwriting and what can go horribly, terribly wrong.

A Memo of Congratulations

Dear Database Administrators:

Thank you for renaming all of the indexes on my table. These are supposed to help my software run faster, but only if I have the correct names.

Imagine my joy when the manager in charge of the project spent much of the day complaining about the slow performance of my web code (written in hand-rolled PL/SQL), while the real problem bubbled underneath in your recently (and frequently! Kudos!) changed indexes.

I understand that you know how much I love debugging working code and how much I love a good puzzle. Renaming the indexes so that none of my database hints work any more? Genius! Not only does it slow down my database access, it makes my web pages load so slowly the web server times out! Excellent!

Even better, a misnamed index will make things even slower than having no index at all. {Begin slow clap} Bravo, my friends.

I regret to inform you, however, that the next time you make such a change without notifying me, I will find it necessary to optimize the data partitions on the main server with a large electromagnetic chainsaw.

Love,

rain.