Interesting Stuff

I came up with this puzzle on my own, but I don’t seem to be the first one to think of it. How many animals can you name that are also verbs? My list is in the first comment.

(adapted from the April 2 Sunday Puzzle on NPR)

How many words can you make with the letters in PYTHAGOREAN? To make this more interesting, each word must also be at least 5 letters long.

My word list is in the first comment. and no matter how many times I try them, neither HARANGUE nor NEOPHYTE can be made with those letters. :-P

I realize the title is a bit forced. The worst thing is that if you unscramble the anagram, it’s still a bit forced. Oh, well; they’re both cromulent titles/headlines.

First, some heartening news, as horrible as it is: the Iraq Study Group’s report, which says again that we’re losing the war, our troops, and the hearts and minds of all people involved, has made a lot of people unhappy. However, public opinion seems to be pretty much in line with its claims (which seems unusual; typically expert analysis disagrees with “common knowledge”). The UN seems to be pretty upset with this whole imbroglio as well. It appears that even some Republicans are starting to view the situation from a more realistic point of view, and are beginning to search for a way out of this quagmire before it ruins the political party. Could there be a glimmer of hope for a withdrawl from Iraq? I am not aware of any way to do it without leaving Iraq less stable than it was with Saddam around, but it might still be for the best at this point.

How’s this for some really shiny news: a Firefly MMORPG appears to be on the horizon. Assuming this is as cool as I hope it is, it almost makes me wish I owned a Windows box. Almost.

NASA has announced plans to go ahead with Bush’s (perhaps ill-conceived) plan to put a permanent base on the moon by 2020. This could be really cool, or it could be a huge waste of money. I’m not sure anyone knows which it will become, but several other countries are interested in joining in on this project. We shall see what happens.

There has been another ceasefire between the Israelis and Palestinians, even though the Palestinians continued to launch rockets into Israel several hours after the supposed ceasefire began. Ordinarily I wouldn’t put much stock in this, but it has lasted a surprisingly long time. There was a bit of intra-Palestinian violence recently, but the truce has lasted remarkably well. In fact, this seems like the best news in the Israeli/Palestinian conflict since about 1993.

For the first time in a really long while, I don’t have any really bad news to post. Huzzah!

I’ve never really thought impressions were that funny, but Frank Caliendo (as seen in this movie) is absolutely fantastic.

Also, remember the Portal trailer I posted recently? I’ve now played its precursor, Narbacular Drop. It’s the same game idea, but with crappier graphics and a slightly buggy engine. You can even create your own levels! There are some people out there who have made incredibly complex levels, which are pretty cool.

Sara came over tonight to play Scrabble. Kenny was going to play, too, but copped out at the last minute. It seems that my reign as “Scrabblemeister” around here is at an end. For the 2nd night in a row, I lost – 271 to 294. Partly, this was because I had horrible letters – roughly 2/3 of my hand was vowels the entire time. Partly, this was because Sara had some good words – with PET and BIB on the board, she got a double-word score on the Y:

 L
 U
 M
 PET
BY
I
B

She got 40 points that turn. And I had just started to tie up the game!

Partly, this is happening because I’m really not that good at Scrabble. I appear to be better than other people around here, but I don’t stand a chance against Mini, or even my parents. Well… I dunno. I’ve never seen my parents get a 7-letter word. Regardless, I’m not disappointed that Sara finally beat me. It was a good game.

Whee! Remember over the summer when I was so excited that I got my first 7-letter word? Well, in the past couple weeks, I have played two more games, and gotten two more words! Sara and I were playing, and Kenny and Rami were watching (I have no idea what they were doing in my room, but it was cool to hang out with them anyway). The 2nd turn of the game (that’s right – the second turn!), I built off of Sara’s “HONEY” to get a triple-word score:

     E
HONEYS
     T
     A
     T
     E
     S

That netted me a good 80 points. Weirdly enough, we tied at the end — 275 each. This was a bit humbling, because this was the first time I’d gotten a 7-letter word on her, and it was also the first time I didn’t beat her. hm… I guess part of it was that I didn’t get any of the high-scoring letters (she got the Q, Z, X, and J), but part of it was that I definitely didn’t box her in enough. She managed to put the X on a triple word, and put QUIZ on a double word. All in all, though, ’twas a good game.

Then, tonight, Robert, Kenny, Rachel and I played Scrabble. I had had a slight lead all evening, and then, just as we ran out of letters to draw, I pulled the perfect ending move. Earlier that game, I had placed BADE just above the bottom center triple word score, so that no one could possibly get it (JADED was right above it). However, I then managed to play BULLPEN like this:

       J
       A
       D
       E
     BADE
BULLPEN

Landing the B on a triple word score and ending the game in one fell swoop! 92 points that turn. We played that everyone else got one extra turn to try to get rid of letters, so Robert got rid of his Z, and Kenny even managed to run out of letters as well (though he only had 3 or 4 letters in his hand). My final score – 215. Kenny came in 2nd with 124, so I’m feeling pretty good about the game.

Alex stopped in to visit, which was nice. She seems to be doing well, and is certainly visiting much more this year than last. The two of us, Mac, Elisa, Kenny, and Amanda watched The Professional, which we all missed at FNMG this evening. It was… interesting. Certainly a very violent movie, but at the same time, it was rather emotional. I’m not sure I’d recommend it. And there were some really creepy parts, as when Natalie Portman (who was about 12 when this movie was made) tells Jean Reno (who is in his 30’s) that she loves him. Not a daughter-father love, but a have-sex-and-get-married love. ew… At the same time, I’d be interested in finding out what other directors have watched this, because some of the same sort of imagery shows up in things like Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels (hit-man raises a child, takes the child to kill people, yet makes sure the child doesn’t swear, smoke, or be rude), the new Ocean’s Eleven (the SWAT scenes), and in Road To Perdition (I won’t say anything about this, because I don’t want to give away the end to either movie). One thing I didn’t know before this evening that the director (who also played the bad guy) also directed the Fifth Element (where he again played the bad guy) and Nikita (don’t recall if he played the bad guy or not). So… yeah. Interesting movie, all in all.

Yesterday, I finally got DMA turned back on for my hard drive (I’m using ReiserFS for my main partition). Huzzah! I can now watch more episodes of Bullshit (Amanda, thanks for giving me new episodes), and my music doesn’t sound as crappy any more! At this point, my computer is pretty much back to where I left off, except for the 2nd monitor, which I can’t get to work for the life of me. It does just fine at 640×480 resolution, but that’s less than 1/4 of the resolution I should be getting (I know it works at 1024×760 at 60Hz). Damn it! Well, I’ll get it eventually.

In the meantime, it’s now a touch past 3:00 in the morning, so I’m going to bed.