Liloia.com

Spread your fertile manure upon the land...

Inspired by a conversation with Dave. Fourteen business terms and their definitions:

"We're going to leverage our assets..."

To use resources. The word "resources" conjures up images of fourth-grade social studies where little icons of oil dereks, fish and corn were scattered on a US map. Your teacher asked, "What resources does Iowa have?" And you had to find which little icons hovered over Iowa on the map. We're adults, so we like to use "assets" to make sure people know we're big now.

Actualization

The ancient Mayans used this word to invoke their god of animal dung to spread his fertile manure upon the land. It is still used in the same manner today.

"40,000-foot-view"

An overview. The speaker may substitute any altitude he or she feels comfortable ascending to. Be advised that ascending too high during the use of this phrase may result in dizziness, shortness of breath, and bleeding from the nose and/or mouth.

"Let's not get into the weeds here, Bob..."

A catchall phrase used to redirect the conversation elsewhere when you cannot explain the details of what you're talking about. Alternatively, it can be used as a defensive shield when you just don't feel like hearing about someone else's crappy project.

We're planning to monetize that product line..."

To make money from something, used primarily by pimps to describe earning funds via their stable of working women.

"Think outside the box

A phrase which formerly meant to think creatively. It's current use is as a homing beacon to locate employees who should be forced into early retirement.

"Using our best practices..."

Doing things your way.

"Our widget is on the bleeding edge..."

So new and cool that only Mark in IT knows how to use it.

Paradigm Shift

A radical change in the way people think... which is what needs to happen in order for the market to accept the totally useless idea you're proposing. Can also be used as an excuse for a product's failure to take hold: "We just didn't get the paradigm shift we expected."

SWOT Assessment

Quizilla for businesspeople.

Web 2.0

Interactive content. Examples of Web 2.0 include blogging, Wikipedia and 1980's slam books.

Product Synchronization

Working cooperatively with other departments to achieve a coherent offering. Cultural anthropologists have have not seen this phenomenon appear since the Great Barbie-Hot Wheels Collaboration of 1982.

360-Degree-Feedback

An opportunity for your co-workers to officially note how annoying you are.

"We're going to play hardball on this one..."

To be uncompromising. Like Mr. T. He pities the fool.

The MPAA Appendix

Like the appendix, MPAA ratings are quietly useless... until they fail to work, then they become a really big pain.

The ratings are supposed to guide a parent toward films which are child-appropriate, but they're too oversimplified to be informative. And, though the MPAA likes to position itself as the stalwart defender of family values, their ratings system is actually fluid and changeable -- i.e. they adjust film ratings in order to generate the film industry the most money:

...while the current system does not serve consumers well, it works perfectly for the filmmakers, the studios and the theater chains. It is based on a cozy relationship between the MPAA, the film industry, and the theater chnains. It is a malleable system that can be altered at will to accommodate changes in the market. For instance, the rating of choice right now is PG-13. A movie with a PG-13 rating is just easier to market: parents like it better than the more adult R-rating, and kids like it better than the more juvenile PG rating...

So, in order to accommodate the marketing demands of studios and theaters, the MPAA has been slowly but surely changing its criteria so that a PG-13 movie today contains far more violence, sexual content and profanity than a few years ago (for example, it used to be that one F-word would garner a film an R rating; now it takes 3 or more F-words).

Remember that when some talking head from the MPAA claims to be protecting children. (In a related story, the MPAA overstated the rate of content downloading on college campuses by 200%, then used the inflated number to urge Congress to pass laws to crack down on downloaders. Oops!)

So if MPAA ratings serve studios, they can't also serve parents. And they don't. There was the time we took a much smaller Trevor to see G-rated Brother Bear and found fifteen minutes of brother-on-brother whacking, hitting, and... as Trevor would say back then, "wanging." Along with the price of the movie ticket, we had to calculate in the time it took to have the "no hitting" discussion again.

We skipped Lady in the Water because of the PG-13 rating and watched it later to find it would have been fine for his delicate sensibilities. There was a lot of spooky growling, but not a lot of gore. Or, most recently, the PG-13 fiasco that was Transformers -- which dedicated a nice chunk of celluloid to a frank discussion of masturbating. Two films, same rating, vastly different results. How is a parent supposed to know what to expect from two letters and a number?

I used to read Christian movie reviews for better film descriptions, but religious sites tend to judge the content while reviewing it. Christians aren't the only people monitoring their child's content consumption, so I've switched over to Kids-in-mind; a site providing non-denominational, apolitical and objective information for parents.

Kids-in-mind provides not only a numerical approximation of the Sex & Nudity, Violence & Gore and Profanity in a film, but a detailed listing of every instance of each occurance. And that's the really useful part. If there's an exposed thigh or some good-natured roughousing, you'll know about it. If one character calls another "insane," it's listed.

I used the site last weekend with Cloverfield. I read some of the scene descriptions to Trevor and showed him the trailer. He declined, so we skipped it. And again this morning to see if he could join us watching The Invisible on DVD. He couldn't.

So that solves my little parenting hurdle, but what do we do about the MPAA? Broken things should be fixed. Parents are sending kids off to the movies and choosing content according to the ratings. Maybe we just spread the word about better ways to evaluate film content and let the MPAA busy itself with it's cute little ratings project while we go the theater.

Yeah, they aren't happy

When we first got the second cat, Miley and Norrin fought all the time. It was so bad that we kept them physically seperated for the first three weeks that Norrin was here.

In retrospect, I suppose they were playing rough but not really actually hurting each other. Things seems to have settled down quite a bit though, haven't they? :)

Undulating Meadowlands and Talking Toilets

Auntie Alli gave Trevor a big stack of Redwall books at Christmas and Dave finally convinced him to start reading them this January. The thick books with tiny type are intimidating, but it turns out that Trevor loves the story and he's finally put the infinite re-reads of Captain Underpants to rest.

I mentioned I had never read any of Brian Jacques' books, so Trev gallantly came downstairs and presented me with Redwall (which he finished). He even checked up yesterday to see if I had started yet, which I hadn't. So today I picked up the book during lunch to get in a chapter and I was a little surprised at what I saw.

Here are some sample words from the start of the book: noontides, languishing, foursquare, flanked, undulating, perimiter, cloisters, novice and cowl. Phew! Trev comes to me with an occasional word question, but mostly he sits under the covers and reads at night. I assume he's figuring the words out from context, like I used to do as a kid.

A big thank you to both Alli and Brian Jacques -- I'm thrilled we're off the books with talking toilets for a while!

Jerry O'Connell is a genius

I've always liked Mr. O'Connell. While he may not be the most highbrow actor, I am a big fan because I enjoy watching him and he entertains me. At the purest level, isn't that all that matters.

I was one of five fans of "My Secret Identity", and Sliders was appointment television. I even watched some of The Bachelor just in case Jerry popped onto an episode. (Ok, not all episodes)

This video by Jerry on Funny or Die is hysterical. Enjoy it!

Hulu, give up your secrets.

I caught a mention of Hulu in passing, in an article primarily about Netflix vs. Blockbuster. It's a free content-streaming website in the same vein as Netflix's Instant Watching, but brought to you by the networks themselves. I don't know what the business model is, but I like it. The selection of television shows is more up-to-date than at Netflix (who keeps recommending I watch aging shows like Earth 2 and Xena), but the site is in private beta, so you have to join their list, then wait until you're invited.

We've been catching up on some semi-recent shows on Hulu by hooking up Dave's laptop to the tv. The setup is perhaps a bit out of range for a non-technical viewer, but everyone can at least watch on their PC. The quality of audio and video playback is actually better than our fuzzy antenna channels. And the shows are more current, like: It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Bionic Woman, 30 Rock and The Office. Other people have talked at-length about Hulu's slick design, so I'll just add a few user-experience notes.

The first and most important issue is that the episodes I viewed have disappeared from the website. I watched the pilot of The Riches and returned to find that every episode of the series, except the small clips, was gone. But Dave and I have watched the first season of Kitchen Nightmares and they don't seem to have gone anywhere -- which is confusing. After searching the About page and the Terms of Service, I still can't determine if previously-viewed episodes are routinely going to disappear, or if this was a coincidence.

The second little feature that tweaks me is that you cannot pause or otherwise alter the playback during commercials. I understand the intent is to force the viewer to watch the ads, but if the ad comes at an inopportune time, you're stuck waiting for 15 seconds. It doesn't seem like a long time in print, but when the phone is ringing and you're waiting to pause the playback, you could easily miss a call after four rings. It would be just as effective to allow users to pause commercials, but not allow them to skip or fast-forward the ads.

You can embed videos, just like YouTube, which is great if you talk about tv a lot on your blog. I don't find it overwhelmingly useful, but here's an amusing little SNL clip, just to show you what it looks like:

Hulu is fun because we don't have cable or satellite, and 50-year-old tv antennas are tempermental (and hulking) things. Downstairs there are four networks, two of which are actually watchable through the static. Upstairs we get NBC, CBS and a French-speaking network from Quebec. And yes, I have watched American tv in French when there was nothing on in the US. Ouvrez la valise du banquier!

Let's go fly a kite

It's another windy day on the island today. The kind of day when the heater runs constantly to counteract the cold air forcing it's way into every crack in this old place.

One day last summer, the three of us helped a mass of other volunteers put up a huge canopy at the Goodsell Ridge in preparation for Teddy Roosevelt Day the next morning. This was a massive tent (large enough to hold a wedding reception) -- no sides but a heavy plastic tarp on top with about 200 cords holding it down. The bracing poles and supports were two-inch galvanized pipe. The roof trusses took 2-3 men to lift. We assembled the pieces, then nailed two long spikes into the footing of each support. I swear to you it wasn't going anywhere.

The next day, we arrived for the event and saw a new, slightly different tent at the site. Off to the side was the wreckage of the old tent; bent poles and torn canvas. Turns out that the island wind picked up in the evening and ripped half of it out of the ground, the wind collapsed the galvanized pipes and twisted the entire canopy. It was trashed.

Why I thought yesterday, with temperatures in the single digits and 40 MPH gusts would be good for kite flying is a mystery to even me. I guess I was getting a little stir-crazy and wanted to get outside. So Trevor and I assembled his stunt kite and brought it into the field.

Before we had even reached an open area, our hands were numb. We had gloves, but the wind sailed right through them. It's not easy steering a stunt kite when you can't feel any fingers past the middle one. We got it into the air on every try -- in fact, the kite was torn out of our hands before we even tossed it most times. But we couldn't unroll string fast enough to get it sailing comfortably before it would spin in mad circles and try to impale the launcher (me).

We gave it a huge effort before the frigid air rendered all of the tape holding the kite together unsticky and pieces started falling off. I saw this happen when I tried to fix the mailbox with duct tape last month. It gets cold enough and duct tape might as well be the Sunday funnies for all of the adhesive power it has. After chasing down three runaway kite tails in gale-force winds, we packed it in. Here is proof our our foray into the arctic vortex:

Kite, we'll see you again in the spring.

How to Taunt a Tiger

Remember these two? They're the fine, upstanding young men who said, "we didn't do nothing" when asked if they had done anything to prompt Tatiana the tiger into pouncing. Turns out, they did a little bit more than nothing, and endangered hundreds of other zoo visitors with their actions.

Here are Paul and Kubir's tips for geting yourself mauled by a Siberian tiger:

1) Go to the zoo high. Mauling is much cooler when you're stoned.

2) Chase that pot with a bottle of vodka. Drunk and high is like peaunut butter and jelly... or assault and battery. You can't have one without the other.

3) Stand on top of the protective barriers. How else is that tiger going to see you unless you get right in her territory?

4) Wave and gesture at the tiger. If you can make a shadow puppet of a wounded wildebeest, you're golden.

5) Yell at the tiger. Insult it's mother. Oh snap.

6) Bring your fake urine. What, you don't think I'd bring the real stuff, do you?!

One of the two survivors of the San Francisco Zoo tiger attack that left a 17-year-old dead told the victim's father that the three had yelled and waved at the animal while standing atop the railing of the tiger's exhibit, police said in court documents filed Thursday.

...

Investigators seized a small amount of marijuana as well as a partially filled bottle of Grey Goose vodka from the car, according to the inventory that police submitted from the search.

They also found a kit commonly used to defeat drug testing, which included a vial of unisex synthetic urine, police said.

Paul Dhaliwal's blood alcohol level had been measured after the attack at 0.16 percent, twice the legal level for drunkenness....Kulbir Dhaliwal's blood alcohol level was 0.04 percent, and Sousa's was 0.02 percent, Matthews said. All three also had marijuana in their systems.

Ski Trip

Yesterday, Trevor and I finally embraced Vermont life a little bit more than on Thursday. The Isle La Motte Recreation Department (setup, run and managed by of our friends Heather and Elizabeth) put together a ski program for the kids in the elementary school.

We headed out to Mt Titus in New York for some lessons and a couple of hours of skiing.

Both Trevor and I opted for skiing versus snowboarding, which in retrospect seems like was a good choice. Trevor did quite well considering this was his first time on skis. Staying upright was a problem, as was getting back up but when he was standing he did well stopping and turning (a little).

He even went up the chairlift on the bunny hill with me once, and made it down the hill. He opted not to join me for a few final runs down the hill. Next Friday we go again, fun fun!

Revealing My Eigenvector

I stumbled upon a curious new algorithm for measuring a person's digital status. It's called a QDOS, and it was developed by British company called Garlik -- which names the venerable Tim Berners-Lee among it's advisors.

The QDOS FAQ says:

Your QDOS is brought to life in your own iconic QDOS mark of 4 overlapping colours, from largest to smallest, each one representing the different dimensions of your digital status: popularity, impact, activity and individuality.

We derived it from the word ‘kudos’, meaning ‘glory, fame or renown’.

At the heart of QDOS is a powerful mathematical representation called an eigenvector which is used to calculate everyone's score for each of four dimensions - popularity, impact, activity and individuality.

I'm a sucker for a good eigenvector, so I filled in the (lengthy) list of locations where I can be found online, resulting in my QDOS of Q5881:

The immediately-noticeable purple area above represents my online activity. I'm pretty much at the max for online participation -- with the jobs I've had, that's not surprising. There are hundreds of blog posts under my name at Blog for America alone. Not to mention years worth here at Liloia.com and a few thousand Flickr photos.

The rest of the pictogram colors, green (popularity), blue (impact) and yellow (individuality) are visibly lower. I participate more in online culture than the web notices me. To that I say, relative anonymity suits me better than being the lightsaber kid or the singing beach mom any day of the week. The Internet has provided a decade worth of paychecks, so I'll just keep my head down and continue typing, thank you very much.

After you get your score, you're invited, nay... encouraged, to pit your score against known personalities. Turns out, I'm ranked above all of Manchester United as well as Pixie Geldof. As David Letterman would say during a game of "Is this Anything?" No, this is nothing.

I did come in just above Juan Carlos I. Though as the reigning king of Spain, I would imagine he doesn't keep up with his Facebook account as much as he'd like these days. And I'm oddly higher than Francis Crick. Watson, I could see -- with all of the bad press he's getting these days -- but dear old Crick? That hardly seems right. Even farther down the list is Linus Torvalds. The travesty! Surely, the man who birthed Linux has more digital whuffie than I?

Go register for the beta and don't be put off by the waiting list. The invitation arrived in minutes. Let me know if anyone ranks lower than me. That would be something.

Clipper Ships of Yore

Frequent flying these last few months has made me nostalgic for the old Pan Am transatlantic flights my family used to take to Hong Kong. These planes -- though I don't think they were the luxury clippers of the fifties -- were practically flying hotels. Everyone was offered a pillow and blanket, not to mention dainty little slipper socks. Headphones cost a dollar to rent, and they were as heavy and complicated as stethoscopes, with pins that would fit nothing but an airplane armrest socket.

Except for one notorious run-in with a combination of blueberry pancakes and landing turbulence, the meals were excellent -- served hot and like clockwork. It was apparently a cardinal sin of the stewardess code to let a passenger miss a meal. Every flight, I'd try my hardest to fall asleep to avoid airsickness. And every flight, some well-meaning woman in a blue suit would wake me up to eat.

Dining in air was more elegant than most of today's chain restaurants, with printed menus, engraved silverware and drinking glasses made of real glass. (I bet my dad has some of these stashed away...) There was also a second-floor lounge which I peeked into on occasion, with plush seating and full bar service.

These days, we do have television at every seat on many flights, but tv seems to relegate the whole flying experience to the realm of the mundane. If I'm going to hop on a plane and watch Fear Factor, it might as well be any other Tuesday night. Spongebob was so engaging that Trevor barely noticed his first plane ride. I had to poke him in the arm repeatedly to show him the view out of the window. "But mom -- Spongebob has ripped pants!" Where was the armrest-gripping terror? The confusion over air-pressure changes? The requests for gum? He was more engrossed by the New York City Subway System than air travel.

The Smithsonian Store at Dulles is selling little travel bags emblazoned with the Pan Am logo -- they look just like the flight bags you'd see a stewardess carrying. (Back then, there wasn't a "flight attendant" in sight, they were all "stewardesses.") I'd love to have one as a carry on to remind me of chicken piccata and slipper socks when I'm handed a bag of Doritos Munchie Mix after six hours of travel.

They didn't do nothing.

More from our friends, the tiger boys:

...two young men in hooded sweatshirts sought to take the car from the zoo parking lot the day after the Christmas Day attack. They were denied entry by security guards, according to a statement a guard filed Thursday in San Francisco Superior Court.

The young men who tried to retrieve the car described themselves as friends of Paul Dhaliwal, 19, and Kulbir Dhaliwal, 23 - brothers who were injured in the attack that killed Paul Dhaliwal's close friend, 17-year-old Carlos Sousa Jr.

After security guards refused requests to release the car, the two hooded young men asked if they could retrieve belongings from the black BMW M3, including a cell phone, according to the statement by Lamar Harris-Walker, the guard.

The two young men left the security post immediately after they were asked for their names and contact information, Harris-Walker said.

And this other tidbit:

Sources told The Chronicle that paramedics taking the Dhaliwal brothers to the zoo by ambulance had overheard Kulbir Dhaliwal tell his brother, "Don't tell them what we did."

The sources also said Paul Dhaliwal was intoxicated at the time of the incident, having used marijuana and consumed enough liquor to have a blood-alcohol level above the 0.08 legal limit for driving. The older brother also had been drinking and using marijuana around the time the tiger escaped, the sources said.

The boys claim they were simply "dancing, singing and laughing." Yes, these guys are 17, 19 and 23. Not 5, 7, and 10.

Urban Duck Hunt

I was walking down the street in DC one night this week and I heard gunfire nearby. At first, it didn't register as a dangerous sound -- I'm used to gunshots from hunters on the island. Every morning at the bus stop with Trevor I can hear them going after ducks and deer. During the off-season, every Sunday is target practice in local backyards.

After a minute, it registered, Oh yeah -- I should probably be concerned. They're probably not shooting at deer down here. But what are you going to do, hit the ground? You just keep walking.

Hotel Helix

For this month's DC trip, I tried out the Hotel Helix. It's a really fun place to stay at full price... and if you can find one of their special $99-a-night deals, drop what you're doing and make a reservation now.

I noticed the Hotel Helix while staying at the ill-fated District Hotel in November. (More on that at a time when I can stomach retelling the story. I'm still waiting for a response from a CEO.) I looked down out of the windows of the District Hotel -- being careful not to lean on the rickety panes, lest they fall out -- and saw a funky outdoor courtyard with a slow and relaxing light show and lots of laughing patrons. A few unoccupied rooms had their curtains open and I spied shag carpeting, ottomans in bright primary colors, and drapes with mod sixties designs. I assumed the place was way out of my price range, but I found a mid-January deal for less than $100 and booked it.

The Helix is clearly in a renovated older building. You see the signs of age on baseboards and moldings; they're clean and newly-painted, but dinged and gouged. This is not a mark against the hotel, but rather speaks volumes about how much was done on the rest of the room to make the prior condition almost unnoticeable. The Helix's furnishings are not high-end, but they make up for their price tags with fun, humor and kitsch.

In the room itself, the amenities are the stars of the show. The mini-bar was stocked with standbys, but there were also little surprises like pop rocks, wax lips and a tempting bar of high-end chocolate. The prices were typically honor bar high, but you had lots of choices... Nantucket Nectars, Coke, Diet Coke, several brands of beer, Perrier, Fiji, and so on. The closet had not only extra pillows, but two plush animal-print robes for use or purchase, fuzzy slipper socks and an umbrella.

I was a little disconcerted by the furry bed covering. Anything with that much fur arouses visions of crawly things, so it stayed on the floor while I stayed in the bed. And the bathroom, though just as great as the rest of the room decor-wise, (Aveda bath products!) wasn't very roomy. I should note that the room itself was probably the largest hotel room I've ever stayed in. There were two sitting areas, the bed, plus a desk and chair and still plenty of floor space for a yoga mat or massage table. They do offer in-room massage, but I didn't take advantage of that particular amenity.

The staff service was on par with a swanky five-star establishment. My newspaper of choice was at my door every morning. As I checked out, one staff member cheerily helped with my luggage while another checked me out, and a third hailed me a cab. Everything was quickly and easily taken care of. The last place that took such good care of me was the Mariott at which I was a Gold Member.

I had dinner in the lounge with Joan and Michelle and they found several weekday specials. I ordered a strong mixed drink (Pajama Party) and the Helix Burger with fries for around $12. The atmosphere was festive, but subdued enough that the three of us able to converse easily. Our server was also unfailingly chipper and didn't seem to mind that we lingered for a couple of hours after eating.

The hotel is in an up-and-coming neighborhood which was safe enough for me alone at night. There was a solid 45-minute walk from the nearest Metro station. But it is a walkable distance -- and probably faster if you know where you're going. Nearby is a 7-11, a 24-hour CVS and a lovely Whole Foods grocery, not to mention a Starbucks, Caribou Coffee, a few bars and a good pizza place. The next time they have a deal running, that's where you'll find me.

Keeping the Change

DC cab drivers never give you back correct change. If you hand them a twenty, they'll sigh heavily, then count out singles in a long, resigned procession of bills. It's not uncommon for the stack of bills to be a dollar short, and you'll never receive your coins.

If the fare is $7.50 and you hand the guy a ten, you'll get back two dollars. Wait as long as you like, that's all you're getting. Once, I received two singles, a quarter and a dime back on a $7.50 fare. It was some sort of feeble nod toward the fact that he owed me fifty cents.

If the issue revolves around cabbies not wanting to carry coins, then DC should make the fares rounded dollar amounts. Instead, they're all one-dollar increments starting at $6.50, $7.50 and up. Maybe they're confused by the fact that I prefer to get my change, then tip, so they're tipping themselves. Which is presumptuous, not to mention flat-out theft.

I began this week's trip as a good tipper; a couple of bucks for a single-zone ride with no luggage. I'm also a good passenger. I make your ride easy. I don't eat, drink, smoke, complain about the temperature, or ask you to change your Christian-right evangelist programming on the radio. I don't play with the window controls. If you're sullenly silent, I'll look outside and amuse myself. If you're chatty, I'll talk to you and throw out some witty comment to make you laugh. I don't care if you drive too fast or too slow. If I'm late, that's my problem. I won't suggest directions or mention that your breath smells like my cat. The slightly-disabled cat who goes poo on the kitchen floor then pokes at it to make sure it's real. Two dollars is a great tip for a ride like that.

But as I was cheated out of fifty cents here and ten cents there, I adjusted my method of operation. Instead of waiting for my change, then tipping with the singles, I hand over the ten and ask for "a dollar back, keep the rest." These guys are cheating themselves out of my full $2 tip by not handing over the change.

Icy Plunge

Anyone from ILM recognize someone in this video? Happy birthday, Sylvia!

To Taunt a Tiger

New information was realeased today in the San Francisco tiger attack. First, a few objects were found in the enclosure after the attacks which hadn't been there before the escape:

A source close to the investigation said the rock found in the habitat measured 9 inches, and a tree branch and pine cones were found that came from trees that were not near the tiger's enclosure.

Zoo employees did not see the items in the enclosure before the tiger escaped, the source said.

Second, the statement of a witness' who says she saw four boys tormenting the big cats has been made public:

Jennifer Miller, who was at the zoo with her husband and two children that ill-fated Christmas afternoon, said she saw four young men at the big-cat grottos - and three of them were teasing the lions a short time before the tiger's bloody rampage that killed 17-year-old Carlos Sousa Jr.

"The boys, especially the older one, were roaring at them. He was taunting them," the San Francisco woman said. "They were trying to get that lion's attention. ... The lion was bristling, so I just said, 'Come on, let's get out of here' because my kids were disturbed by it."

If you click through to the article, you'll not that Miller called after reading news reports to ensure the zoo knew that she saw four boys and not three doing the taunting. Sounds like a reliable, persistent witness to me.

Idiot.

So this guy, in order to snatch bragging rights, bought 1,000 barrels of oil at $100 today. He sold them at a loss -- ego was the goal, not profit -- but the damage had already been done:

US shares had already been hit on Wednesday by figures showing that the manufacturing sector was contracting.

After oil broke the $100 barrel they fell further, with the Dow Jones closing down 1.7% or 220.9 points at 13044.0.

Globally:

Asian shares closed mostly down Thursday after crude oil surged to a record $100 per barrel triggering a slide on Wall Street and stoking concerns about global economic prospects.

For a guy who wanted bragging rights, I sure don't see his name listed anywhere. Hope it was worth it.

Smell Test: FAILED

I'm enjoying following the story of that San Franciso tiger attack. The more I hear about it, the more insane little pieces fall into place. Here are a few things that make you go "hmm":

Three 17, 18 and 23-year-old guys were in the zoo just after closing (some reports say closing was at 5, some say 6) near the tiger grotto. I can imagine a seven-year-old's cries, "Mommy, I just want to see the tiger one more time before we goooooo!" But two older teenagers and a 23-year-old, alone, after closing time?

A shoe print was found on the enclosure wall. It's tied to no one yet, but this could yield a clue.

After the incident, zoo workers also "noticed an empty bottle of vodka sitting on the front seat of the car driven by one of the victims. The workers notified police and the car was towed pending the completion of the investigation." Now this doesn't necessarily indicate that the teens were drinking at the time of the incident, but it does say that they were likely to be drinking alcohol in their car at some point. Think of the journey of a typical vodka bottle. You buy bottle at liquor store, put it in car, bring it home, drink it, throw out the bottle. At no point does the open bottle need to go back into your car, unless you are drinking it there.

There are unsubstantiated reports of the teens carrying slingshots, but that doesn't quite jive with the police's statement that "there was no indication the tiger was provoked." We'll leave that off the table for now, because there are plenty of other interesting things to note about this story. Though one of the boys' fathers said on a broadcast news report that, "they could have been throwing rocks and the animal shouldn't have been able to get out." Curious statement. Got rocks on the brain?

The teens have refused to speak to police about the incident:

"The brothers, who remained in hospital after surgery on their wounds, were initially hostile to police, refusing even to give their names or that of their dead friend."

They would not even give their names?! Is that the behavior of an innocent victim or someone feeling the panic of guilt?

While they stonewall the police investigation, the teens have quickly employed the services of a notorious defense attorney who refuses to divulge details of the attach, but is quick to say that the zoo was at fault. One of his claims is that the tiger escaped much earlier than the post-5:00pm closing time. The boys apparently were able to evade a 350-pound tiger for 45 minutes as it chased them. *cough*

The three attacked boys were purportedly friends; however, "the Dhaliwal family has reportedly refused to return repeated calls by the dead man's parents since the attack." You were with your friend when he died, you say you tried to save him and became injured yourself, but now you refuse to hear the thanks of his grateful father. Nothing like going into lockdown mode, eh?

Whatever happens, expect that the zoo will be held liable for the attack. "San Francisco attorney Matt Davis said California law holds the owner of a wild animal 'strictly liable' for any injury it causes to a person. 'The zoo would be liable even if some vandals were responsible for freeing the tiger from its grotto,' he said."

Wii Casualty

There we were, Trevor and I, deep in a boxing match on Wii Sports. He threw a right -- I blocked. I threw a left-right combo and the stars swirled around his forehead. He made one last-ditch effort to take me down with a hard left. He swung and suddenly we heard a crash.

An ornament hook had attached itself to the Wiimote safety strap. The ornament was flung across the room and against the wall as Trevor made his punch.

Trevor 1 Ornament 0