White House: Bush concerned about food shortages
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President George W. Bush is very concerned about global food shortages and has asked senior aides to look into how the United States can help alleviate the problem, the White House said on Monday.

• By engaging in a war of choice against the hungriest countries so that, after countless civilian deaths, there winds up being a surplus of food?
• By blatantly denying the science of counting so that there appears to be a surplus of food?
• By appointing some talentless crony to oversee the issue so that enough people die of starvation that there winds up being a surplus of food?

Hmmm. Comedy that makes you cry. I might be on to something here.

Extra! Funny guy Kareem (of improv fame) had the following punch lines to add:

By changing the definition of the word “starving” to mean “playing dance dance revolution”, so when foreign media reports that “millions of children are starving”, Americans think they’re having a big party.

By engaging in an ad campaign that claims all foreign food is actually poisonous, and the US has taken steps to make sure there is less of the poison food in the world. The starving people of the world have greeted us as liberators.

By having a press conference in which President Bush shrugs and chuckles, refers to a reporter by a in-jokey pet-name, and organizes a touch-football game in the Whitehouse Rose Garden.

I’m posting this for you, Lono. And you should immediately know why. I don’t remember who won that particular night, but I do know it makes for one of the best “I had a lame, dorky high school expereince” stories ever.

For the rest of you: This is a picture of Talisman, the bestest board game ever. It’s kinda like playing Dungeons & Dragons, but as one who is dear to me put it, far less stilted. There’s not really any “I am a dwarf, dressed in leather, I killed three goblins. Will you join my quest?” and other forced interaction. Instead, you grab a character and go beat up on everything in sight until you kill all the other players and are the last one left standing.

The aforementioned Lono and I played the hell out of this game in our youths. My own copy went the way of many things and is no longer in my possession. But when the discussion turned decidedly geeky over dinner with a couple herself and I dine with recently, it unearthed another Talisman player. After he and I finished squealing like little girls over the prospect of actually playing everyone was excited enough to give it a try.

What you see here is the middle portion of the game. I looked like a threat to win at this point, all buff and tough as the Warrior of Chaos. Instead, though, that pesky Minstrel (played by herself, of course) beat us all to a bloody pulp before the night was out.

The bad news for those of you who are interested in the game is that it is out of print and can be quite expensive on Ebay. The good news, though, is that a new version is expected to be released in October. So if you’ve ever wanted to be a geek, your best chance is coming back around.

This just in, a computer version of Talisman is also coming later this year. Will the wonders never cease?

I’m quite fortunate to be able to see some really neat birds out of my office window. Here’s a little dude who’s been coming by all week. Click through to see more of him and some of the other critters I’ve been visited by.

Anyway, among the various topics that were part of the lecture was a little thing called sparklines. This concept really captured my imagination and, fortunately, it seems to have grabbed the attention of quite a few others, too. Thankfully, many of those folks are more technically inclined than I, and that means that though a wonderful plugin for WordPress (Simple Sparklines) I can now include sparklines in my posts here, when appropriate.

Thanks great, yongi, but what about people who aren’t using WordPress? Well, another fine individual has put together the Sparklines Web Service for easy web-based creation of sparklines. There are other options, too, like plugins for Microsoft Office. So, really, anyone who wants to use sparklines is bound to be able to find a way.

Oh, and to show off the awesome power of sparklines…

• Random up and down value
• The Houston Astros were 13-14 in August, 2005

So there. I’m a data geek. Such is life.

An alligator at the Texas State Aquarium, waiting patiently at the front of the tank, hoping beyond hope that somehow the glass would break and he could get to one of us silly mammals.

It’s a jellyfish – several, actually, since those ghostly images in the background are other jellyfish that were further back in the tank – straight from the Texas State Aquarium in Corpus Chrisit, where Patita, Madre Mo and I spent the Thanksgiving weekend.

There’s lots of very cool things to see at the TSA, so if you’re ever down in that part of the world you should give it a visit.