Halloween Linkdump

A quick set of this weeks links.

• Larison: The GOP is adrift
• The Spirit Level
• J. G. Ballard - John Clute
• Raising up Dead Horses
• Telling Stories in the Age of Postmodernism
• Who's Afraid of Sibel Edmonds

Happy Halloween

A Tad

Measure twice, cut once

Culled from here and there, (most were on Neatorama) here are some measurement systems or roots from common phrases.

• Baker's dozen - If you buy a dozen loaves of bread, bakers usually throw one in for free, so baker's dozen means 13. They didn't do this out of the goodness of their heart: the practice came to be in the 13th century, when a medieval English law made it so a baker could be punished by chopping his hand off with an axe if he was found to be shortchanging a customer. Tossing in an extra loaf of bread seemed to be a prudent way of keeping one's hand.
• Gillette - American physicists Ted Maiman, who made the first working laser, used to compare laser output power by how many Gillette razor blades it can burn a hole through. A 2 Gillette laser can only through 2 stacked razor blades.
• jiffy - there are two definitions of a jiffy, both of which are units of time and mean very, very fast. In computer engineering, a jiffy is one cycle or one tick of the computer's system clock. The second definition is the time required for light to travel one centimeter, as proposed by American chemisty Gilbert Lewis. This translates to 33.3564 picoseconds.
• millihelen - If Helen of Troy had "the face that launched a thousand ship," then the amount of beauty needed to launch a single ship is a millihellen. A negative hellen is the amount of ugliness that makes a thousand ships sail the other way.
• moment - If you ask someone to wait a moment, you're asking them to wait for a very short period of time. But how short? Turns out a moment is a medieval unit of time equals to 1/40th of an hour or 1.5 minutes.
• smidgen - Yes, it means "small" but how small? A smidgen is exactly 1/2 a pinch or 1/32 of a teaspoon.
• Warhol - Andy Warhol once said that "In the future everyone will be famous for fifteen minutes." So, warhol is a measure of fame. 1 kilowarhol is being famous for 15,000 minutes or approximately 10 days. Conversely, 1 milliwarhol is about nine-tenths of a second of fame, which is about how long it takes my brain to forget a name.
• Sagan - Carl Sagan loved to say "billions and billions of stars," so in his honor, a Sagan is defined as at least 4 billion. So that you know, there are nearly 100 Sagan (400,000,000,000) stars in the Milky Way galaxy.
• Big Mac Index - a measure of exchange rates (actually purchasing power parity) between two currencies. It was defined by Economist's editor Pam Woodall to measure whether a currency is under- or overvalued. She used a Big Mac because the burger is produced in about 120 countries.
• Potrzebie - 1 ngogn halavah = 1 blintz (b)

Pumpkin Dance

Via BoingBoing:

Designed, built and programmed in about record 3 weeks! It runs C on an Axon microcontroller. It uses all digital servos and can lift over twice its body weight. The software (soon to be given out open source) allows for 6 synchronous degrees of motion. Future additions will include foot sensors and a remote control option.

A little light source in the head, a chip of dry ice, some creepy music, ...

Again with the Audio

Far be it from me to criticize how another person spends their money, (yeah sure, Jim) but the acoustic environment, i.e. listening room, counts. It's difficult to tell from the picture, but the room seems custom made for standing waves, comb filters, nasty first order reflections, and a reverberant time almost guaranteed to cause articulation problems. We'll set aside the electronics being in front of the speakers and just guess that this is the stuff that drives designers and salespeople to drink. But just think how great a Lady GaGa MP3 would sound. And the flash, oh Lordie.

San Francisco, 1958

San Francisco 1958 from Jeff Altman on Vimeo.

Jeff Altman has taken some 16mm film his grandfather shot in San Francisco, cleaned it up and dubbed a soundtrack. Taken in 1958, this is a snapshot of the city 50 years ago. It takes forever and a day to load, even with the HD turned off, but there you are. I was going to make a snarky comment about our present day city being an overpriced, smugly self congratulatory, third world outpost, owned and operated by a few financial racketeers, but I realized that would be provincial. (a common affliction in SF) The rest of the nation is pretty much in the same boat. It would, however, be nice to walk down the street without the omnipresent gimmies every twenty feet.

I Need Brains

Via: Neatorama

Barkeeping is one part of catering I have little experence in, so I'm going to mirror the instructions from Fine Living

Ingredients:
• 1 1/4 oz. strawberry vodka such as Stoli
  1/8 oz. Rose's lime juice
  3/4 oz. Bailey's Irish Cream
  Splash of grenadine

Chill vodka for better smoothness. Add vodka and lime juice to a shaker, shake and strain into a shot glass. Using a straw, dip some Bailey's Irish Cream into the shot. Once you submerge the straw into the Bailey's put your finger on top of the straw to hold the Bailey's in the straw. Dip the straw tip into the vodka and slowly release your top finger. The Bailey's will curdle a little bit due to the lime juice and you should be able to make strands of Bailey's.

Repeat the straw/Bailey's process to build a "brain" in the shot glass. Add a splash of grenadine to the concoction to add the 'blood' to the mix. Down the hatch as a shot

Audio Grade

The $147.72 "audio grade" power socket

Cryogenically-treated, with vacuum sputtered unobatanium wipers. But why stop there? A real tweek-bunny would regenerate the AC (basically a power amp with a sine wave generator at the input), tear out all the switches and plugs, and weld shielded power cable directly from regen output to the stereo's power supply transformer lugs. This begs the matter of grounding the shield. Custom, hand dug, low impedance, dedicated ground rod might fill the bill. And about those spurious RF fields? A Faraday cage for the room, of course. If you still can't hear difference between different capacitor brands in the studio's compression chain, you might be interested in......

Strawberry Fields

I've been looking around for this one for quite some time.

Corporate Libertarianism

Photo be Diane Arbus

After a birthday conversation with my friend Scott, I got to thinking about the connections between libertarianism and those darn artificial legal entities. We've all heard the sales tag, libertarians believe in liberty. Hard to fault, but the devil is in the details. (I believe in Motherhood, but I'm a little squishy on apple pie; orthogonal libertarian, I'd guess) As the story is told, releasing our multinationals from the onerous burden of law and petty regulation would allow the currently impacted genius of American entrepreneurial productivity to fully flow, nourishing our collective material desires, and providing a genuine invisible hand to wipe up any and all spills. (dang, I want my Sexy-Brite® pie-product™ to be pumpkin flavored©). Oddly enough, there is some fine print. (Do Not look behind the curtain or a not-so-invisible foot will kick your tuchis) But what the heck, here are a few regulations that a truly libertarian commentator might want to leave in the dustbin of history.

• The Corporation: Originally codified to limit liability to the amount invested by a small group, the corporation is now a legal person, has Constitutional rights and freedoms, laws shielding it from responsibility for actions taken by its members, a unique accounting algebra, and direct access to government welfare, i.e. your tax dollars. A libertarian business, of course, would spurn any special rights as being ideologically incorrect.
• Limited Executive Liability: Our hero scoffs at such an idea. He earns his money through his own unaided efforts.(pace: Ann Rand) If an accounting irregularity is found, his innate honesty compels him to find the janitor responsible and feed her to the outer darkness, tout de suite.
• Handpicked Boards of Directors and Compensation Committees: Without those pesky laws insulating management from stockholder, the libertarian executive would naturally gravitate to open nomination and deliberation. Our Director demands that his compensation is concomitant with his results. (it was probably those "hate America first" people that weaseled the Private Securities Reform Act ('95) through congress)
• PACs, Holding Companies, Legal off-sheet accounting: Our fellow doesn't need any of this. He sells a good or a service. (or at least he did, before off-shore Monte with The House of Cards became such a personal profit center. Your money, my bet, here's the bill)

And so on. While the sophomore in me retains a bit of romantic excitement over the idea of no rules, (we be bad, we can handle it) the been there - done that portion suspects that the most vocal business ideologists intend to go half-way, (and you know where the line will be drawn ) then adopt an easy does it, wait and see campaign. (leavened with a piquant touch of regulating the consumer, we don't want no anarchic-syndicalism 'round here) On the other hand, we could avoid any flapdoodle and let a closed committee negotiate an international treaty. (like, for instance, NAFTA) Why whine about Bush or Obama when a suit, sitting in a boardroom in Copenhagen, could enforce the Divine Right of Capitol professionally. I'm sure that you can see the invisible hand, holding our best interests at its heart.

Orange Votive

Orange Votives

Here is a nice one-off votive holder for catering decoration during the season.

• Slice the orange in half and scoop out the flesh.
• Use a ring or cookie cutter on the top half and insert a few cloves.
• Place candle and re-assemble.

Photos on linked site (under picture), found in Lifehacker.

Sunday Links

Photo by Kile Cassidy

The first three links of this week's info-dump are from photographer Kile Cassidy's site. He spent a weekend with the Dalai Lama in NYC and posted some great pictures along with a quasi-diary of the events and his thoughts. Great stuff, some backstage, some public, and all personal.

• Part 1
• Part 2
• Part 3
• Regarding Plot
• On the Excess of Directors
• Longhorn Beetles
• Douglass Rushkoff: Net Effect

Boiled is a Misnomer

A properly soft-boiled egg

Here is a link to a site that goes over the time/temperature numbers for a hard-boiled egg. (along with a collection of bad puns) For whatever reason, service was left out. After you've bought the egg to the proper temperature, toss it into ice water. This stops the reactions, gets the egg's temperature ready for salad, straight sale, or garnish. If you're going to peel the egg yourself, knock it around in the hot liquid, cracking the shell on purpose, before its ice bath. This allows water to seep in between the membrane and the white, making the peel easier.

If your going to sell the eggs as out of hand food, say a basket of hard-boiled by the register, don't crack them. While it might make things easier for the customer, they tend to pass over eggs with blemishes or cracks. This is the time to use vinegar in your heating liquid, not because it effects the inside, but because of how it makes the shell look.

I know there are a million shortcuts, and there is always a handy tap of boiling water, and you can make them quicker (even though it takes you just as long when measured by a clock) but the result is a chewey egg with a green sulfide ring around the yoke. Mayo just doesn't cover that taste up, and it looks like the stuff you couldn't eat in grade school. Get a timer and don't wait until you have to hammer the process.

Regarding Thorstein Veblen

This unique knife has a nonstick silicone "blade" for spreading mayo, peanut butter, jam, cream cheese and more. The serrated stainless steel edge slices tomatoes, cheese, bagels, baguettes and finished sandwiches.10.5"-long to reach the bottom of jars.
Holes in the blade prevent sticking. Nonslip silicone grip. Dishwasher safe. - Bookofjoe -

Oh for heaven's sake, at $25.00 this tchotchke is going to provide you with breakfast-time status? A good cook uses a few good tools, not a parade of gadgets. I'm a tad bit unsure how a fluoropolymer (teflon) coating and some holes in the side qualifies it as green. Get a $1.39 spreader from the supply store and save your money for a proper pan or knife.

Nasty Dan

Late Night with whomever is o.k., The Smothers Brothers Show was pretty good, but the top of the line guests do Sesame Street.

Otaku Patrol Group

Last week I stumbled across an old tribe. We were setting up our communication system: phone for the ship, phone for us LAN for us, LAN for Navel security, internet, and radios-o-rama. A fellow delivered our land mobiles (walkie-talkies) while I was watching a shark. (the gulls had scored a baby shark and were busy fighting over it) The units (ICOM IC-F4) had a keypad, but were already preset. Now who can resist test driving a programmable, so I looked up the rental company on the intertubes to see if they had instructions in a PDF. Nope, but I found something else.

The Otaku Patrol Group started as a group of early adaptors (video). In the ham tradition, they specialized in radio and emergency services. Otaku means people with obsessive interests. So we have a Goth tribe of communication specialists. Who better to rent your gear from? And as a personal recommendation, the radios survived the worst storm SF has seen in quite some time with nary a squawk.

Hello - Goodby

La-Z-Boy Mods

La-Z Hotrod

This one is just too good. The guy must be a heck-of-a shade tree mechanic. Old weird America still has some life in her.

Dennis LeRoy, 62, of Proctor, Minnesota, pled guilty to driving his tricked-out, motorized easy chair while drunk. After leaving a bar where he had at least eight beers, LeRoy smashed his chair into a parked car. The chair features a lawnmower engine, built-in stereo, headlights, and some sharp pinstriping

Mirrored from BoingBoing

Watermelon

I know it's fall, but the atypical, or new typical, weather we've been having means local watermelon will be in market along with the first pumpkins. (tomatoes with flavor are still rare, though) If this keeps up we could see Jack-o-melons and Father Christmas-lanterns. Watermelon, when presented as a salad, usually serves as cheap bulk, providing something to set the berry on. Even at the peak of its season, watermelon rarely ends up as more than a wedge in the corner of the plate. (putting a sprig of mint on it is tasty, but you know what I mean) Here is a salad, in the little of this, little of that, California style, that you can build on.

• Watermelon cubes
• Seeded cucumber
• Goat cheese
• Saba vinaigrette
• Mint

Notes: Size the cuts so that you can get a mix of ingredients on your spoon, but not so small that their texture becomes indistinguishable. The goat cheese provides tang and creaminess, but serves as a secondary note. Use the good stuff, but ramping up to an artisan brand is an expense that might be better spent when the cheese is the center of attention. Saba is specialty shop expensive. If you have an Italian neighborhood in your town, it might be more reasonably priced in some of the shops catering to the locals. If not, you can use a balsamic reduction. Again, use the middle tier vinegar. The subtleties that mark an excellent aged balsamic are volatiles that are lost in the reduction process. (but boy, does the kitchen smell good) Another approach might be to use pomegranate syrup. Change the cheese to a yogurt curd and you've bought the salad back to its Saharan roots. Mix and match, but leave the ingredient list short. The watermelon should be the predominant or center note in a watermelon salad.

Now we're left with the seeds and rinds. Waste not, want not...
• Collect the watermelon seeds and dry them out in a colander. Wash off and toss in a hot pan until almost roasted. Prep a cup of salt water and pour in. Stir until the water is gone and the salt coats the seeds. Eat like pumpkin seeds.
• Peel the green part off the rinds. Cube the remaining white part and soak in brine overnight. (3 cups rind, 1cup water, 3/4 T pickling salt) Rinse and cook in clear water until tender. Prepare a pickling liquid made of 1 tsp. whole cloves, 1 tsp. whole allspice, One 2″ piece of cinnamon stick, 1/2 cup water, 1/2 cup white vinegar, 1/2 cup plus 2 T. granulated sugar. Cook the rind in the syrup for about 30 minutes and can or fridge. This recipe is from Lillian's Cupboard, and you can see photos of the process on her site.

Spin Ice

Magnetic monopoles in spin ice

It seems my earlier assertion that you probably need GUT energies to realize Dirac's magnetic monopole overlooked the side door that a few solid state physicists have been opening up. The journal articles are holding their breath on a few fronts, while the pop-sci articles have already picked out the color on the new quantum computer cases.(I want a tan and creme one to go with my udu drum)

Halloween Cupcakes

Properly creepy. A step-by-step is included with a bunch of photos in The Barefoot Kitchen Witch. No special decorating tools are needed, and you can lick the batter before the bowl goes to the dishroom.

Links for Sunday

Fleet Week is over. (more like two weeks) Now I have some time to catch up, process paper, and get started on the next project. This is the usual Sunday link-dump for articles that caught my attention.

• Images of Saturn
• Modern Conservatism
• Solid State Cooling
• Urban Farm's Fish Tacos
• Robot Weapons
• Who Killed Cock Robin

I'm looking forward to getting back to a regular schedule this week.

Busy Hands are Happy Hands

when farm kids get bored

Both my sister and myself were genuine farm kids. Projects like this, however, were not on the program. We could see similar things in the Country Living section of The Farm Journal, but just couldn't connect it to our reality. (and getting permission, ...uhh... NO) We did make hay forts when the cousins came to visit though. (and set the hay-loft back in order before we got caught, too.)

Pictures via Marilyn

Again with the Pumpkins

Wolverine

And still more carvings

USS Green Bay

USS Green Bay at Pier 32

Art Gourds

Photo by Kathy Green

It's pumpkin carving time again. A series of photos in Woman's Day show just what a good carver can do. The one above reminds me of the cover for In the Court of the Crimson King.

If you decide to carve your own sculpture for the season, don't forget to save the seeds, wash them, and toast in a slow oven. You can crack them and eat out of hand, or garnish the soup you make with the pumpkins that didn't quite match your original intention.

via: The Presurfer

Fleet Time

Next, wire the mikes and turn them around.

Sunday's list of longer articles that caught my eye. Posted on Saturday because it was ready.

• Bot Nets
• ISMAR preview
• Ralph Lauren vs. BoingBoing
• Brian Wilson / George Gershwin
• Bombing the Moon
• Cell Detection and Cell Jamming

A Manly Marshmallow

This one is a bit out of the restaurant mainstream. I can't vouch for the recipe personally, (uhh...yeah, it tastes like chicken) so I'm working from instructions. My friend Geri has mentioned eating crickets, (they taste like crickets) but entomophagy remains theoretical among most of us. As you can see from the picture, some cultures have no such qualms. Under our current Wall Street management, grasshopper just might become the workingman's lobster. Stay tuned.

1. Catch the little buggers. You were young once, you know how to do this.
2. Pop the head off. The innards should come out of the body cavity along with the head. This also removes any parasites that may be along for the ride. Remove the large legs and wings. If you're squeamish, or the grasshopper is large, you can boil them first to make this process easier.
3. Cook: You can wet them in a beaten egg mix, dust with corn meal, and sauté, or go straight to the deep-fat fryer. For those of you into drum circles or thumping your inner survivalist, you can insert a pointed stick into the body cavity and roast over a fire. (sort of a manly marshmallow) Serve with ranch dressing and a lemon wedge. (a toothpick and some parsley to clear the breath might be in order too)

Who can tell. I didn't like Brussels sprouts when I was a kid, and now.... Video

Periodic Table of Science Fiction

Periodic Table Poster

Michael Swanwick has republished his Periodic Table of Science Fiction in his personal blog. (see Flogging Babel to the right) I read it ages ago, but just like almost everything by Mr. Swanwick, it gets better the second, third and fourth time around.If you've ever wondered about the literary uses of praseodymium, here you go.

Dogs and Halloween

Image forwarded by Sue

This is my Neighborhood

When scientist Pat Gaines heard a scream of a hawk while at Bonny Lake State Park in the Colorado and Kansas border, he looked up to see this amazing spectacle: a kingbird relentlessly attacking a red-tailed hawk several times its size!

Gaines had focused his camera on one red-tailed hawk because the bird had been screaming. As he followed the hawk across the sky, a kingbird dive-bombed the hawk.

The hawk, which is not a predator of the kingbird, flew as fast as it could from the kingbird. For a moment it appeared the kingbird had stopped attacking. But then it began the pursuit again and — to Gaines amazement — landed on the hapless red-tail’s back.

“He rode the hawk for 25 yards. The hawk was not trying to fight back — it was just trying to get out of there,” said Gaines.

As the kingbird rode bareback on the hawk, it pecked away at the hawk’s head.

“They (the kingbirds) are not afraid of anything,” said Gaines. “Until this happened, I had never seen one perch on a hawk’s back.”

Mirrored from Nearorama

Fleet Week 09

Andy Kilday

Fleet Week set-up is starting. Soon the pier will have power cable, trailers, fence-o-rama, and a ship that's a great deal larger than the tug in the background.

Lorenzo

Squared-Up

Trans-Am from Broadway

My link-dump is a bit early this week. Way early call tomorrow.

• Stanley Fish waves his hands
• A grown-up answers him
• View of Saturn
• View of glaciers from space
• Essay on Space Program
• The decline of the English Department

Have a good one.

Guests

Cindy and Alan

Try Anything Once

Via Anthony

Creole Cream Cheese

This one is a breakfast treat from Louisiana. It's a farmers cheese, served in cream, top milk or half & half, and covered with sugar or cane syrup and fruit. Other uses include cheesecake, fillings, ice cream, and eating out of hand with S&P. This is one of those foods that was produced locally, back in the day, but was supplanted by product as Sir Corporate Agriculture discovered the charms of Dame Government.

Due to current health regulations, making cultured products in a restaurant is problematic. (you try explaining to the inspector why a large bowl of milk is sitting around unattended outside the refrigerator) Therefore, do try this at home, off site or as an overnight project.

Put 1 gallon skim milk in a bowl and let it come up to between 70° and 80°. Add ½ cup of cultured buttermilk and ½ teaspoon liquid rennet diluted in a quarter cup of water. Mix the heck out of it, cover, and let it sit at room temperature (72°) for 12 to 15 hours. Spoon the curd out with a skimmer and drain. If you don't have a cheese draining implement (and honestly, few of us do) you can perforate some clean cottage cheese containers and set them on a rack in a roasting pan. Put in the fridge and wait until the whey stops dripping (4 to 5 hours) then repackage.

Notes: This differs from Junket because of the addition of the buttermilk's culture. Therefore you're dealing with microbes. Don't just wash your equipment, sterilize it. If you have a ceramic bowl, it helps stabilize the temperature. However, if you've used it for yeast dough, go with a stainless. Don't borrow your pastry people's equipment or space. They use yeast. Yeast and warm standing milk do not equal cream cheese. Keep the whey. It can be cooked for ricotta, used in soup, or given to the previously jilted pâtisserie. The bread and muffin crowd will thank you.

• Detailed instructions in Home Cheese Making by Ricki Carroll
• Rennet and equipment: New England Cheesemaking Supply
• Variations and Foodways

Chicken Piccata

This dish is an old standby. The Villa de Chez Celebrity Chef probably serves squid ink gnocchi, made from Peruvian potatoes and pignon nuts bought down the mountain by an obscure religious order, but I suspect that chicken piccata has made an appearance at the staff table. This recipe, adapted from Cooks Illustrated: Feb 01, is tried and true. It serves four, but can ramped up or down easily.

Take four boneless breasts, skin if necessary, pull the tender, and trim. If you have the time, brine* them. Cut them in half horizontally* (butterfly), apply S&P to both sides and dredge in flour.

Bring a flat bottom pan to heat, oil lightly, and cook the chicken to brown on both sides. As the pieces curl, press them back into the heat. You're looking for even cooking. Cycle as many times as necessary. You don't want to crowd the chicken, and you definitely don't want to burn the fond building up. Hold done pieces in a low oven.

When the chicken is done, add a bit of oil and sauté a minced shallot until clear (30 sec.) If your mom is Italian you can also add 2 oz of prosciutto chiffinade. When this is ready, deglaze with one cup of chicken stock*, and add lemon slices (Half a lemon, sliced thinly, pole to pole) Reduce to 1/3 cup. Add the juice of 3/2 lemon and 2 T capers*. Simmer for a minute, take it off heat and mount* with 3 T unsalted butter. Add 2 T minced parsley, spoon sauce over reserved chicken, and serve.

Notes: Brining means to soak the breast in a salt / sugar solution for a few hours.... I know the traditional method is pounding, but that tradition dates back to when chicken referred to birds, not a genetically standardized meat production unit.... Most recipes use wine, but you're adding more acid and the wine flavor dulls the lemon flavor. (in my opinion) .... Use nonpareil size capers. Taste first and if too salty or vinegary, rinse them. If they taste good to you, toss 'em in.... Mount means to use butter to thicken a sauce and add gloss. You use small chunks of cold butter, one at a time, and whisk them into the sauce as they melt. It does not mean to float a spreader full of room temperature butter on the surface.

Pico de Gallo

Rather than going into all the salsa (sauce) variations, or the different kinds of pico de gallo (roster's beak) I'm going to give you the basic tomato based mix that most Americans view as salsa.

Prep: Cube 3/2 lbs of ripe tomato. The size of the cut depends on what the salsa is being served with. Mince 1/2 cup red onion. Seed and mince 1 large jalapeño. Toss together and let drain in colander.

Before Service: Chop fresh cilantro with a sharp knife. Don't mince, mash or over-cut, leave some life in the herb. Juice two limes. Put everything together, then add salt and fresh pepper. STOP. You're done. Clean up, go on to your next job, or grab a smoke, that's all there is to it.

The key point here is the tomato. When you buy or receive them, let them sit out at room temperature until they ripen. The gas-stabilized half ripe red product you find at most store's tomato bin just won't do the job without some help.

A lot of recipes add additional bits to the basic mix, i.e. garlic, garlic powder, hot sauce, jicama, chilies of this or that sort, scallions, bits of orange, lemon or lime zest, sugar, and so on. My advice is if you're working for the house, use the house recipe. If you are the house, master the basic move of sourcing ripe tomatoes before you try a variation. Remember, when cooking for the public, some darn person, usually seated near you, will be 'lergic to at least one of your additions. (not that this has ever happened to me) When making it for yourself, have fun. (bits of orange are surprisingly good)

She's Blonde Too

O.K. let's see where we stand after the latest re-boot. Borg be gone. Re-assimilated by the Caeliar and whisked away from direct storyline involvement, they have to time-out in the wings. If you ever have to explain Deus ex Machina to a fanboy, point to that bit of business. Janeway is dead, except in the hearts of her friends, but there is that bit of Q involvment just waiting for a guest appearance. Voyager has been fitted with a Quantum Slipstream Drive a support fleet, and a benamite recrystalization matrix, (Irsk-Dulaph poop: really, pg 333 ) but the engine room blows up just as regularly as in the first Enterprise. (Scotty, we're going to stop at the Radio Shack planet and buy you some fuses) Seven is now a damsel in distress (wonder how many nude Jeri Ryan hits Google got on that one?), but comes equipped with a regal bearing, full lips, a new wardrobe befitting her regal bearing, and catoms. Catoms are programmable matter. They work like secret Vulcan mind tricks. When the story gets painted into a corner, you can pull a new one out and save the day. Darn handy, and they accessorize so well with a regal bearing. A side note; baby Miral Paris has learned to say p'tak.

Please don't get me wrong, I paid my money and I'm satisfied with my purchase. It's a product, like meatloaf or a comic book series. The good guys win by looking to their higher nature, the bad guys loose, or more often temporarily withdraw, and off we go. For two or three hours you can immerse yourself in familiar gossip, plenty of remember when, sophomore pathos and philosophy, and some journalism grade slippery science. A tad shy of the Odyssey, but good dum fun and a temporary palliative to the end of the world bloviation our other media outlets are currently selling.