At the dawn of history....

Yes, so I got all excited when reading this book History of the Ancient World(v1) by Susan Wise Bauer, which explores what is known from the earliest recordings of history. By history, she means historical records, as opposed to speculation, however sound, that is based solely upon the layout of ruins. So she means lists of kings, codes of law, recordings of battles and catastrophes and epic tales. Her historical description, then, begins around 4500 BC, with the Sumerians, Egyptians, Indians of the Indus Valley and the early Chinese cultures. The vast majority of early writings were inventories and records of trade, with increasingly sophisticated levels of abstraction over a brief period of time. So I've followed these regions over the course of 2 millenia (or 200 pages), and now we're getting into some other cultures, like the Minoans. The Sumerians were lost to the Akkadians, who subsequently lost to a coalition of the Elamites and Babylonians. Upper and Lower Egypt was united into the first Dynasty (Old Kingdom), fell into civil war, was reunited in the Middle Kingdom, was dissolved again by war and drought (and the Hyksos from the East). The Longshans were absorbed into the Xia Dynasty, which was undone by corruption and replaced by the Tang.

I just finished the journey of Abraham into Canaan, and the rise of King Minos. It's been a really interesting read. She has a very engaging style, and covers a lot of ground in a short while. This is pretty much what I was looking for, as I wanted a starting point that gave a decent overview with timelines. Clearly, though, you can't just take one person's word on something as important and emotionally charged as history. I'm definitely going to go back and explore some of these areas in more detail. In particular, the story of the Sumerians, and how no one ever managed to fully unite their territory (which is only 5 major cities on a plain that is bordered by river on all sides). It's interesting to consider the state of a "kingdom" that is one city in size where the city council has to approve the actions of the king. The famous king and warrior Gilgamesh wanted to war against a neighboring city, but the council wouldn't support him, so he didn't get enough manpower to do the job. He went ahead anyway and failed. Then he failed again. Finally, near the end of his reign, he swept in on the heels of a rival's attack and took the city. Within 200 years, the first epic retellings of his life began to emerge, painting him as a godlike man.

The reason I'm going on about this is that I was really struck by the level of sophistication of these distant people. 5500 years isn't a lot of time, evolutionarily, but I guess I had the conceit that our sense of society and culture was an evolving thing. After all, we advanced Americans just recently decided, nobly, to NOT engage in slavery. You only have to go back a few hundred years to find large societies that performed human sacrifice to appease the gods. How crass is that? But if culture/society is an evolving organism, how can one explain away the beauty of the Epic of Gilgamesh. It has all of the elements of the tragic epic that one normally associates with biblical stories, or the poems of Homer and Virgil, or the epic Beowulf. I would really like to explore other oral to written accounts from the earliest days.

I'm going to move quickly over a couple of unrelated items that struck me in my reading, so as not to make this an epic itself.

-What balls it took to engage in trade in the Mediterranean and Indian Ocean, especially since they probably cleaved to the coastline where possible. What a risky exercise in trial and error! I'd like to look into what a 3500 BC trade ship looked like.

-Every early civilization except Egypt had a Great Flood account, most of which happen around the same time, coinciding with increased global temperatures. In every case, the world is profoundly changed after the flood (more wicked or worldly, kings are no longer semi-divine, etc.).

-I was always puzzled as a kid by the story of Cain and Abel. As an adult, I can see that they could be analogous to different peoples warring for religious reasons, but the point seems to be that God chooses one over the other, and that's that. It's about obedience, just like the Adam and Eve story, Abraham and Isaac, and so on. But an earlier account from the Sumerians shed light on this story for me:
Bureaucracy, writes Bauer, arose because someone had to make sure that the various elements of society would cooperate to survive in the inhospitable environment of the so-called Fertile Crescent. This required strong leadership, which led to kingship and city building. So the people who had committed to the settled, agrarian life of the city-centered civilization found themselves at odds with the nomadic hunter-gatherers, who were also herdsmen. In an early tale "The Wooing of Inanna", a character named Dumuzi is a shepherd and a king, and he vies for the hand of the goddess Inanna (Ishtar), daughter of Marduk. She rejects him, saying,
"The shepherd! I will not marry the shepherd!
His clothes are coarse, his wool is rough,
I will marry the farmer.
The farmer grows flax for my clothes,
The farmer grows barley for my table."
Class warfare, old school. Dumuzi later offers her fresh milk with cream, and she offers that he "plow her damp field", so he must have done something right. As it turns out, the nomads and farmers worked out a mutually beneficial arrangement. The fifth king in the Sumerian king list was named Dumuzi. But clearly, as writing was an advance brought about by the necessity of "civilized" existence within a city-based community, the city mice got to record the tales of gods preferring them over the country mice...er, or something like that. Actually, the gods ended up pleased with the shepherds on both counts. So maybe the city mice had jungle fever or something.

/dork alert over/

House Hunting

We're off to look at homes in Seattle tomorrow. This is just a wee bit stressful, given that home prices are roughly twice as high there as in a place like Cleveland or Charlotte.

A few mentions...Jonathan's Halloween bash last Friday was quite fun. Jonathan and Emilie were Zack Branigan and Leela from Futurama. I also saw a Frankenstein and bride couple, a few characters from Street Fighter II, several characters from some cartoon called the Ventures (very nicely done costumes, although I don't know the reference at all), a Dude (Big Lebowski), Black Mamba, and many more. I went to Kroger and bought a bunch of props which, once assembled about my person, actually resembled a unified costume that could best be described as Goth Princess. I would post a picture, but small children may happen across these humble pages.

The World Series is over! No more baseball! Yay!

A week ago, I made a kickass eggplant curry, which reminded me of Sonja's great curries (also because they gifted us with a large sack of Basmati rice when they left). I also thought of you guys when Tony and Joanna called me up that night to invite me out to the pub quiz. We actually got called up for the $160 bonus question (Joanna went for the group) which was "In the movie Memento, who killed his wife, according to a tattoo?" None of us knew it, which sucks because I love that movie. Once again, we did great at Hodgepodge, great at Presidents and Politics, OK at Movies, fairly badly on the Picture section, and just got murdered in the Music section.

Have a great week, and wish us luck on finding a great house!

*crickets chirping*

...and a tumbleweed rolls past.

Sorry, no time, no time. And exhausted when there is time.

Check back Monday, won't you?

In case you aren't caught up on Neatorama, I thought this was pretty funny:

"Medical student Wes Pemberton was wearing shorts one day, when he noticed the strangest thing ever:

"I thought it was a hair from one of the girls in the car and it was attached. I’m just wondering ‘what is this long hair doing attached to my leg’," he said.

On his calf, surrounded by normal hair, was a hair that measures five inches long. It doesn’t have a name, but it’ll be famous.

"The world record is 4.88 inches. So I just kind of washed it, and tried to protect it. When I get in the shower, I condition it to make sure it stays nice and strong."

Wes thought that it was the neatest thing in the world. His wife, understandably, did not, so doubtlessly it’ll be gone soon.

Scandal!

Thanks for the hundreds of sympathetic emails over the past week. It's really been a trial, and I've got to throw an index finger to the big guy in the sky for just helping me through it all. I'm happy to let you all know that my rash is clearing up. My personal physician wrote me a prescription for some steroids to knock down the inflammation, and everything is healing up without itching. Better yet, me and Zoe are now Prednesone buddies (DAP!). Her skin has healed, her coat is back to a glossy, soft sheen, and I'm no longer shuddering and calling her Scabbers whenever she twines through my legs. This is just few short months after getting her a Prednesone injection.


I've discovered that I really suck at recreational Photoshopping

In other kitty-related news, Arya has had her front claws removed. Despite our fears of being added to her nighttime litany of names, she seems to have taken to it well, as did Zoe and Escher in their time. The best part is that her destructive clawing of carpets and rugs was the only reason we ever yelled at her, so she will have a yell-free future. Zoe's probably going to be happy about the development, too. We may have a bit of a kitty hierarchy shakeup soon, but I'm confident that Jill and I can swing the tide back in Arya's direction. We have discovered that Zoe does not understand that a successful alpha cat employs the "Tough but Fair" strategy to the role. She's more the "Beat you down at every opportunity and lord it over you whenever possible" type.

We did our annual apple-picking yesterday with Amber and Elaine out at Spicer's. The weather was magnificent, but we about a week late for the good apples. The Mutsus were done last week, and only the Ida Reds were any good this year, and even they had slightly rubbery skin. It was a warm October, which is probably why it seems like the season shouldn't be over yet.











Elaine loves stand-em-ups! And slobbering!

Slow week

Between this and that, I haven't been able to get much work done on the manuscript.

Hence, slow week. I might get something up tonight, I might not.

Probably the next thing is going to be a bit on the earliest recorded history of the Sumerians and Egyptians. Really. I'm reading a non-fiction book, and so now you get to see me wax sophomoric about how we're not really so different after all.

To whet your appetite, here's a link to the oldest known creation myth (it's called the Babylonian creation myth, but it substantively figures into pre-historic Sumer). Cast of characters include Marduk, the eventual creator, and Tiamat, his mother. Tiamat also represents chaos, war, and water (specifically the waters of the seas and oceans).

Oh, poor me

Just saw this quote in my Quote Generator module (how recursive!): "Part of every misery is, so to speak, the misery`s shadow or reflection: the fact that you don`t merely suffer but have to keep on thinking about the fact that you suffer." --C.S. Lewis

My personal suffering is assuredly orders of magnitude less than whatever existential malaise that Lewis was trying to describe, but I've had this [string of expletives] poison ivy reaction on the top of my foot for over a month. Just as it starts to heal, it seems to take off again. My favorite pair of sandals, which I wore every day of the summer, became infected with the stuff somehow. Then, about two weeks ago, I changed my bike's rear inner tube, and developed the same rash across the first knuckles of both hands. I managed to prevent the advancement to from bumpy rash to weeping pustules on my fingers, but the knuckles are all cracked and raw now. That rash has spread to my hands and up one arm to the elbow.

I hate poison ivy. This came from the ivy patch in our front yard, where the poison stuff is mixed in, despite the claims to the contrary from my landlord.

Have a great day :-)

Favorite Flash Timewasters

I have a love/hate thing going with flash games. On one hand, they're free, simple, and often fun or amusing. Since I do everything on a notebook, I can't play the high-res, graphics-heavy games anyway, as laptop screens have a poor refresh rate, making everything choppy. On the other hand, they are designed to be addicting, and some of them can achieve this without offering the slightest in mental exercise. I recently "played" one game where the object is to keep a dot, controlled by mouse movements, moving for as long as possible. That's it--no obstacles of any kind--just keep the mouse moving. At 10 seconds, it taunts you; at 20 seconds it offers a half-assed compliment and taunts you again; at one minute it challenges "Can you keep it going for five minutes?". I didn't try to find out, but that's the trick--to keep you entertained like a baby. "Look at the bunny! Ohh, the bunny's over here now! Look at the bunny!"

My other main complaint about flash games is that they try to do too much, sometimes. Most games start out fairly easy, and become hard as you adapt to the controls. Often, getting more difficult means introducing more elements, and this slows down the game. For games that involve timing, it's a fatal flaw, as all of your practice on the earlier levels developing an internal clock is wasted. Plus it's just frustrating to sit there waiting for the program to catch up with you. Many flash games have no end; they simply get harder and harder until you hit the breaking point, or until they are so sluggish that you quit in disgust. I do like it when you can reach the end, though.

So what makes them addicting? For me, the successful ones are either abstract puzzles with simple beauty and very few rules, dexterity-based games, or games where you level-up incrementally, meaning that you accumulate gold or experience in each level, and you can use this to enhance your capabilities for the next round. It is this latter type of game that usually suffers from the overload slowdown alluded to above.

My earliest favorite was Double Jeu, from the crazy French guys at Zanorg. Their games page includes a lot of ok games, most of which are "keep it going as long as you can"-type games. The shining stars are definitely Double Jeu, Get Rich, and the Poodle one. My favorite thing about all of their games is that they always taunt your progress when the game ends, as only the French can do. Note: after selecting a game, be sure to click on the Union Jack symbol at the bottom of the instruction screen for English instructions and insults.

Addicting Games host a ton of flash games from a variety of developers, many of which are rather sucky (this is where you find the infamous Keep it Moving). They don't seem to filter. Some great finds on that page are Pac-xon, Bowman 2, the Impossible Quiz, and Tanks (make sure to play against at least 3-4 enemy tanks or it's too easy).

Desktop Defense type games are great time-wasters where you place turrets of various types in key locations as wave after wave of increasingly tough enemies crawl across your territory. If too many of them make it through, you lose. I'll link to my favorite one.

Finally, give Portal a shot. It's a game that has just been released for one of the console systems (PS3?) as part of a software package, but someone has made a flash version that's pretty fun. I've gotten to level 32, and I figured out how to get past that level during Elaine's early morning feeding. It's very cool.

Some Flash games that come sooo close, but miss, often fall within the Accuracy category. The two examples in my head are Bloons and Ball Revamped. I love both of these games for the first 20 or so levels, before they FAIL. In Bloons, where you have a monkey who is throwing darts at balloons, you hold down the mouse button for the strength of the throw and move the mouse up or down for the angle. In the higher levels, you often have to throw the darts absolutely perfectly to get past the level, which is just a boring-as-hell exercise in trial and error. Many of the earlier levels have more problem solving, which is what makes the game so cool. Similarly, in Ball Revamped (particularly IV and V), where you're trying to keep a ball aloft by tapping the up arrow and bouncing the ball around obstacles, the early, satisfying problem-solving devolves into the cold sweat of getting the ball between two closely apposed obstacles. Plus, they have an annoying, graphics-heavy splash of stars between each level that chops up the flow.

I'll post my favorite flash games in a links module off to the left (adding more as I think of them). Happy timewasting!

(Please feel free to suggest your favorites in Comments)

The Nobel Prizes

At this point, most people know that Albert Gore, Jr. and the IPCC won the Nobel Peace Prize today for "their efforts to build up and disseminate knowledge about man-made climate change". The rumors swirling around the announcement were that the committee intended to focus on climate change this year, since many emerging and future conflicts will probably have their roots in evolving local climates. I'm pretty sure that many people with much more to lose (like their lives) have been engaged in this conversation for a long time. Rachel Carlson, Lois Gibbs, the Sierra Club, countless missionaries and priests in South America, Asia, and Africa, the Chipko movement, and lobbies in North America and Europe who have worked on debt relief for poor nations so they have the option of saying "No" to lumber and mining companies. Thus, it strikes me that this year's award has more to do with visibility than results. They might have well given it to Bono. However, this isn't necessarily a bad thing, as Gore is proving to be an effective spokesperson who has a long reach, and he is probably capable of pulling more money and political clout towards this cause than anyone else alive.

I'm not sure, but this may be the first time that the prize has been awarded in anticipation of results, kind of like a Power-up for the protagonist in a video game. So, will Gore, brimming with glowing energy, do some damage with this advantage, or will he run around fruitlessly, wasting money and time until the power blinks out, and he's just another shmoe again.

The answer? None of the above. I was just enjoying my analogy a little too much. Environmentalism starts with you, Mr. Gas-powered lawnmower, and you, Dr. Leaves-all-the-lights-on-all-the-time (that's me), and YOU, Mrs. Throw-your-damn-cigarette-butts-out-the-window!

As far as the other awards go, I was pleasantly surprised that I had some rudimentary knowledge of them (conceptually) before they were announced. Medicine: Gene targeting is an essential biological tool that provided me with important reagents for my thesis work. Physics: Clearly, if you're reading this, you get that improving the efficiency and storage capacity of hard disks is important. Chemistry: The surface chemistry work laid the groundwork for modern superconductors and many industrial catalysis applications. Literature: I have no idea, however, who Doris Lessing is, or if I need to read anything by her. Economics: To be announced on Monday, but I predict that I will (a) never have heard of the winner, and (b) not grasp the importance of the celebrated work/findings.

A. Verweij Stroopwafels (100% Butter)

I ate most of a 10-pack in less than 24 hours. They go well with tea.

Time to start jogging again.

This is what it would be like

Who's a cute girl?

To wash away the unpleasantness of the politicos from yesterday, here's a fresh video of a Girl and Her Frog.



I had a cute video of Terry trying to entertain a fussy Elaine, but the sound was dominated by me, offscreen, explaining the premise behind The Order of the Stick to Visco. I'm such a dork.

Addendum

So the poster below is sponsored by the Young America's Foundation. If you order one poster, you get a free poster of George W. Bush! Did you hear that, kids?

I tried to get a list of the dignitaries on the poster, but the YAF online store was down for maintenance. I'm sure it had something to do with people flooding in to take advantage of that great offer.

Another website, Shelley the Republican, which I recommend visiting if only to see their take on this poster, lists John Ashcroft, Ann Coulter, Michelle Malkin, Robert Novak, Ward Connerly, Dinesh D’Souza, Walter Williams and many more. Seriously, check out that site.

Linkin Marc

Jill has a week of service, which leaves me home with the Slobber Monster all day. Yesterday it was tough to get anything done (like lunch) when I couldn't put her down for more than a few minutes. Hopefully, she'll feel like snoozing for a while today.

I've got a couple of new links here. First, an interesting interactive video of the title track from the Arcade Fire's Neon Bible. Not the best track on the album, for sure, but it works well for what they're trying to pull off with the video. I wouldn't mind seeing more of this sort of thing -- perhaps styled like one of those decision tree books. You know, where it says "If you go into the cave, go to page 183. If you continue to the beach, go to page 190."

The other one is an impressive collection of over 800 albums freely available for download. I don't think I need say more.

One final thing:



You know, they're right. No education is complete until the student is warned to avoid these sanctimonious gasbags for all they're worth.

It's Hangover Sunday! Random Items! !!

OK! All copies of the dissertation are off to the bindery. I'm officially and unofficially D-U-N, done.

Old roommate Dave "Visco" Vislosky and our friend Terry came in to town on Saturday, which can only mean one thing: Hangover Sunday! I haven't been out that late in a long time, and it was quite a blast. We closed the Arena and got some early morning grub at the Fleetwood Diner. Somehow, they went out into the 88 degree heat and played golf this afternoon. I just sat inside and drank all kinds of water, and plus I napped. There was a bit of staring and blinking in there, too.

Here's Terry and Elaine, and a very tired-looking Visco.





So for some parting hilarity, enjoy some wonderful de-motivational posters:

First Impressions: Tahuantinsuyu

Mustafa and Jonathan came by for some gaming this Sunday, and it was official Marc Day, where your gentle host got to select all of the games for the day. We played one of my unplayed acquisitions, Tahuantinsuyu, and a beloved classic that neither of the two guys had played, Java.

"Tahuantinsuyu" means "Land of the Four Regions" in Inca. The game is a loose abstraction of the expansion of the Incan empire. Thus, the board is a map of the Peruvian region of South America, a skinny corridor flanked by the rainforest and Pacific. The map is dotted with features important for gameplay, such as City Sites, Significant City Sites (places like Macchu Pichu), Garrisons, and Huaca (villages), that are connected by a network of dotted lines that represent roads. The map is subdivided into small regions that are bordered by a faint color. Every region receives a small, face-down chip that indicates what the level of resistance is in that region, and what one would receive in points or manpower if one were to conquer that region.

The game turn is made up of 4 possible phases: the Inca phase, representing the efforts of all to expand the empire; the Sun phase, which emphasizes the importance of religion and the weather; the people phase, where work actually gets done; and the Sapa Inca phase, in which scoring takes place. The game consists of 7 rounds with a varying number of phases. For example, in the first round, only the Inca phase and two people phases occur. In round two, it goes Inca, Sun, People, Sun, People, Sapa Inca.

In the Inca phase, players receive a set number of Labor tokens, which indicate available manpower. If you had previously conquered a region that provides labor, you receive that here. The Labor tokens are used to build and upgrade sites, or to conquer regions during the People phase. You may also build up to two roads by drawing on the dotted lines with the crayon of your color during the People phase. In the Sun phase, the cards come out. Every player has a hand of Sun cards, which can change the game state slightly for the better or worse. Sun cards are placed between two players. In turn order, each player places one card face down between the players of his choice, so that all players have a card to their right and left. The cards are revealed, and the players adjacent to a card are affected by it. Some rounds have 3 Sun phases, so every player is affected by 6 cards in the final People phase of that round.

I think the card placement mechanism is pretty cool, and it makes turn order important. Many of the cards are helpful, so you don't want to place it near the leader, but if you're late in the turn order, you won't necessarily have an option of where to place your card. Some of the cards are too powerful, however. The Great Pilgimage cards (3 different ones) refer to different Significant City sites. If there is a temple built at the site(s) listed on a card, and the card is played next to a player has a road built to that site, that player may skip his road-building to go on a pilgrimage for 5, 6, or 8 points, depending on the site. In the later rounds, when there are 3 People phases, this is a HUGE jump in points, since a player may then use this card 3 times for 15, 18, or 24 points! This can be unbalancing if one person controls the two cards that refer to the northern temples. This is what happened in our game.

It may be that the designer intended these cards to be a large points boon late in the game to engender more competition for access to Significant City sites, but control of the card means that person can decide when, where, and for whom the advantage will emerge.

My other complaints: 1) There's little competition in the early rounds of the 3p game, since there's so much room to maneuver. 2) The board. It is cardstock, and is meant to be drawn upon with crayon. However the board never fully unfolds, so scoring markers go sliding away, and the crayon lines are rather hard to see. Road markers a la Age of Steam would probably work better. Also, it is often unclear whether a road is in one region or another, which is important. Next time, we'll try plexiglass and dry erase markers.

The first time you play any game, especially if it's new to everyone playing, it's difficult to see what to value highly. I would like to try this again, preferably with 3 opponents, to see how this experience changes my perspective. My biggest fear with Tahuantinsuyu is that you have to suffer through a boring few opening rounds before you start having fun. Otherwise, I think that it's a decent idea that could use better production and perhaps a dash more development. Ideally, that dash would include some thematic spice that creates a bit more conflict. I'm thinking something like an ambush marker that you could place on specific roads or regions -- something directly confrontational to reflect that you're basically attempting to conquer a huge amount of territory, and that always leads to bloodshed and destruction. I would also like to see an improvement of the 3p game to increase competition in the early going.

Do you realize...?

Hot Karl was kind enough to offer me his spare ticket to the Flaming Lips show at Clutch Cargo in Pontiac tonight. The Detroit music scene is pretty weird, in that the clubs are rather far flung. Pontiac and Royal Oak are suburbs north of Detroit that have a lot of clubs, and there are a few live music venues in downtown Detroit. This was an hour drive from Ann Arbor.

The show was pretty cool. The Lips have this overarching sensibility of fun and optimism, and they do their best to infect the crowd. Confetti cannons, giant balloons, musical asides and singalongs are standard fare. Tonight, they handed out hundreds of laser pointers, which led to some predictable hilarity, but which were also used in a slower tune where the lead singer, Wayne Coyne, was lit up solely by the cumulative laser pointers of the crowd. He is a great, positive presence, but sometimes he can really ramble on between songs. For example, there was an extended anti-war rant that spanned two songs.

I'm familiar with three of their releases: Transmissions from a Satellite Heart, Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, and War of the Mystics. They played 4 or five tunes that I didn't know, and two of them were really great. The rest of the show was pretty well done, with some renditions more punchy than others. I thought "The W.A.N.D.", in particular, totally rocked. The closing song was, predictably, "Do You Realize", which I've long found to be moving and emotionally powerful. They did two encores, including "She Don't Use Jelly" and a fantastic cover of the Rolling Stones' "Moonlight Mile".

All in all, it was a nice show, and I had a really good time.

There was one issue that came up for me the following day. The show, and others on this tour, was apparently sponsored by Camel. Back when I lived in Charlotte, I was a smoker, and I would often be approached by reps from RJR and Philip Morris when I was out at a bar. In these cases, the establishment allowed the reps access to their patrons. So when I saw the ridiculous level of Camel presence at Clutch Cargo, I assumed they had secured permission from the club. As it turns out, they've been investing heavily into this Flaming Lips tour.

So why should I care? Smoking is legal, it was an 18 and older show, and the sponsorship was used to subsidize the extravagant cost of the arena-worthy Flaming Lips spectacle, rendered at the level of a club show. My ticket was $25, and there's no way that small crowd paid for that show at that cost. On the other hand, this band that seems to exude a "Make the world a better place" ethos is taking money from an industry that sells, exclusively, a product that is secretly addictive and leads to death and disease, not to mention poverty for those addicts who can't really afford them. They are also granting these people access to their fans. While I have trouble believing that a non-smoker would see the display at age 18 and say, "You know, I think I'll start smoking. The Flaming Lips tacitly said that it's OK.", I can't help but be disappointed in the mixed message put out by a band that touts "Changing the world" as one of their goals.

In the end, they aren't what they want me to believe they are because of this. It's not that I have so much invested in these three guys vis-a-vis faith in humanity, but there's a sense of loss there nonetheless.

BTW, the little larcenous seagull off to the left was forwarded to me by Jim Brodie. It apparently resides in Aberdeen, UK, and locals are so taken with its antics that they pay for the snacks that it steals. It only takes Doritos, and it shares its filthy lucre with other birds. [Edit: URL is no longer valid. Google "Aberdeen Thieving Seagull" if you want to see the video.]