Start the New Year with a Smile

According to the New York Times, the Thai police have found a novel way to improve relations with civilians.

Thailand is nicknamed "The Land of Smiles," but, of late, the Thai police have found it hard to keep smiling. The solution they hit on lies below.

“They have to put on a mask because a smile doesn’t come naturally anymore,” said Ammar Siamwalla, an economist who keeps a close eye on the mores of his countrymen. “Normally people smile. You don’t have to put on a smiley mask.

“But these past few years that smile has worn thin because we are all angry at each other and willing to show it.”

So, what's your metaphorical Thai-smiling-mask to keep you pleasant for the new year?

Live from Middlebury... Muggle Quidditch

Posting on more serious subjects will resume after T-giving break.  Til then, from io9:

The Intercollegiate Quidditch Association or (IQA) held the [Intercollegiate Quidditch World Cup] at Middlebury College (where Muggle Quidditch originated in 2005). Right now over 150 colleges have Quidditch teams including Boston University, Vassar, Bucknell University, Tulane, Oberlin and Emerson College.

The promotional video, with an explanation of the mechanics of the game, is below:

All Politics is Tragedy, but some of it's staged

Ever since the election, a lot of people have framed the McCain campaign as a classical tragedy. To achieve what he thought was his greatest desire, he gave up his soul and was left with nothing.

Playwright Wendy Weiner has decided to chronicle the struggles of a different plaything of the gods in her new play Hillary: A Modern Greek Tragedy With a (Somewhat) Happy Ending.

The concept, according the the NYT review is:

Hillary (Mia Barron), when she is still a girl dreaming of an adulthood in which a woman might pursue the presidency, pledges her devotion to Athena. Aphrodite, jealous, makes it her business to thwart Hillary, her principal weapon being the slick, charming Bill Clinton (Darren Pettie).

It's as good an explanation for the Clintons' marriage as any I've heard.

Thanksgiving Mental Health Break

The American Association for the Advancement of Science has just announced the winners of its annual "Dance Your PhD" contest. Applicants must convey the crux of their research in a 3-4 minute dance video posted to YouTube. Below is my favorite of the winners, "Resolving Pathways of Functional Coupling in Human Hemoglobin Using Quantitative Low Temperature Isoelectric Focusing of Asymmetric Mutant Hybrids" by Professor Vince LiCata of LSU.




(The rest of the winners are at http://gonzolabs.org/dance/contestants/)

Mental Health Break: It was a dark and stormy night...

This blog has been dark for a few days as I moved back to school and caught up with many of these guys. Normal blogging will resume tomorrow, but one delightful item had to be addressed today.

For those unfamiliar with the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, it is named for Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, who began his novel, Paul Clifford, with the following famous (and wretched) line:

It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents--except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness.

Since 1983, the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Competition has sought out the worst opening line to a work of fiction (the line is not required to actually be part of a novel and is usually invented specifically for the competition).

So, congratulations to Mr. Garrison Spik, the winner of the 2008 contest, who was profiled in today's NYT. His opening line follows:

Theirs was a New York love, a checkered taxi ride burning rubber, and like the city their passion was open 24/7, steam rising from their bodies like slick streets exhaling warm, moist, white breath through manhole covers stamped ‘Forged by DeLaney Bros., Piscataway, N.J.’

Welcome back.