The tallest building in Bellevue (right at the city’s 450-foot height limit) will house a Trader Vic’s, as well as other stuff.

Seems like just the other night we were talking about Kennewick Man, and now folks are (finally) headed to the Burke to check him out.

H5N1 (one of 15 Avian Influenza strains) has been simmering in Asia since December 2003, and has claimed at least 54 human and countless (more than 100 million as of last year) poultry lives. "Most influenza experts also agree that the prompt culling of Hong Kong’s entire poultry population [due to H5N1 infection] in 1997 probably averted a pandemic." The WHO has been closely tracking the situation in Viet Nam (later expanded to Cambodia) since December of 2004. They aren’t raising the pandemic alert level above its January 2004 level ("incipient pandemic", near as I can tell), but neither are they lowering it. China’s unwillingness to share information and propensity to do stupid things (and then deny them) are probably creating the greatest hindrance to minimizing the pandemic threat.
It’s a bummer that poultry farming practices in Asia are creating a nearly ideal virus incubation and mutation lab. The conspiracist in me wants to see some significance in the fact that the government of the world’s most populous nation is behaving in a way that is encouraging a situation that could wipe out a substantial chunk of the world’s population, but I find it hard to take the conspiracist in me very seriously most of the time.

The physics makes a certain amount of sense, I guess, since they’re all massive and stuff, but who would have thought Saturn’s rings would have atmosphere?

So the trailer for the new King Kong is out, and I’m not entirely convinced I’ll be able to hear Jack Black as anything other than the hipster doofus he has so beautifully portrayed in virtually everything I’ve seen him in to date.
But Peter Jackson sure can put together a beautiful cgi-fest.

This must have hit blogdex some time ago. I was reminded of it by reading The Year’s Best SF from 1997 or so. The referenced piece seems to typify a particular kind of hard SF that the editor apparently admires. Bleagh.

Moral: if you want me to link to you, don’t use spammer tactics.
Story: I saw some mail today from someone purporting to represent an outfit called Victor House Publications. That mail looked something like this:

Continue reading →

On of the postcards in the Lileks feature mentioned previously is Fjord’s Smorg-ette. Which of course reminds me of Roy’s Western Smorgy still operating in Richland, WA.

With the help of modern research techniques, here are some other extant Smorgs:
Sampan Chinese Smorgy (Stockton CA)
Perry’s Smorgy Restaurant (2 locations in Honolulu HI)
King’s Smorgi Restaurant (Roseville CA)
Peking Smorgi (Merced CA)
Wang’s Smorge (Modesto CA)

And the Smorgasbords (with a few Smorgasboards thrown in)
Diner’s Smorgasbord (2 locations in CA)
Smorgasboard (Reseda CA)
Two Tony’s Smorgasbord (Carmi IL)
Charlie’s Smorgasbord (Vincennes IN)
Knotty Pine Smorgasbord (Lebanon IN)
Paul Revere Smorgasbord (Ocean City MD)
Sveden House Smorgasbord (St Clair Shores MI)
Homer’s Original Smorgasbord (Cincinnati OH)
Kay’s Smorgasbord (Oil City PA)
Miller’s Smorgasbord (Ronks PA)
Shady Maple Smorgasbord (East Earl PA)
Duff’s Famous Smorgasbord (Pigeon Forge TN and Richmond VA)
Hermitage House Smorgasbord (Nashville TN)
George Washington Smorgasbord (Williamsburg VA)
Smorgasboard Restaurant (Barboursville WV)

Lileks hits the nail on the head (again): “But the pedestrian artifacts of yesterday take on extra meaning when the pedestrian artifacts of the present tend to suck.” This is from his new series on postcards from restaurants.