Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader sees that the tsunami death toll is up to 226,000. He thinks his 250,000 number isn’t going to be too far off. Sadly.

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader, and the Smallholder, are both big Bruce Campbell fans. When it was first released on DVD, your Maximum Leader bought Bubba-ho-tep. He watched it one night with Smallholder. And he’s watched it once since then. Al in all, your Maximum Leader would have to agree with Rocket Jones in his review of the film: “No one f*cks with the King”

If you are a Bruce Campbell fan - and God only knows why you wouldn’t be - you should rent this one.

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader couldn’t contain his guffawing at the latest from the Velociman: An Athens Tale.

Your Maximum Leader has but a single question, did the boy soon depart as well?

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader is very pleased to announce that the Foreign Minister (and Mrs. Foreign Minister) have been blessed with a healthy baby boy. The lad is their second child. He was born yesterday, January 18. 9 lbs 2 oz. 20 inches long.

Many congratulations.

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader decided to play a meme game he saw on two sites. (Llamas & Memento Moron.) Your Maximum Leader decided to play off of Brian at Memento Moron’s list. Here goes:

Copy the following list of first lines to poems. If you are familiar with the poem, leave it there. If not, replace it with one you DO know. Put your changes in Bold, put the rest in normal text. Then link back to me. Here are my results:

1. Do you see this ring?
2. There was three kings unto the east
3. Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita (Midway on our life’s journey, I found myself)
4. So you dare me to take the square root of my mother, do
5. Do not go gentle into that good night,
6. In Xanadu did Kubla Khan A stately pleasure-dome decree
7. How do I love thee, let me count the ways
8. Half a league, half a league,
9. Two roads diverged in a yellow wood
10. ‘Twas brillig, and the slithy toves

Your Maximum Leader should state for the record that Number 4 is the opening line from a poem by the Big Hominid.

Carry on.

UPDATE: ACK! Had your Maximum Leader read Don’s post, he would have seen that the Robert Browning line was replaced by Robert. It seems wrong to put the line back in. So your Maximum Leader changed his Number One line to a different Browning poem.

Greetings, loyal minions. You Maximum Leader instructs his minionly readers to regard his sidebar for some small changes.

First and foremost is the elevation of our devoted reader, minion, and star geometry proof writing friend Bill, of Bill’s Comments to Loyal Minion status. Your Maximum Leader isn’t sure why he didn’t do this sooner. Perhaps it is a case of the obvious being overlooked. For a while it was also a sense of aethetics. Four seemed like a good number for the group… Anyway. A very deserving blog has been bumped up to Loyal Minion status. And you all should go and visit Bill regularly and read his writing.

Secondly, Eric also got a bump up. This is because your Maximum Leader found himself reading Eri’s site every day that it made more sense for him to be higher up the blogroll. Plus, Eric has a cool car now. And your Maximum Leader would have purchased a nice Caddie instead of the Villainmobile had it not been for the Villainettes. Yes, dear minions. Your Maximum Leader figured it would be better to have a Villainmobile that would easily seat one Maximum Leader, one Mrs. Villain, and two Villainettes. Indeed, the back seat of the CTS (and it’s variants) is just a little small for the big people your Maximum Leader knows. But the Caddie is a beautiful car, and your Maximum Leader would like to drag Eric sometime. Villainmobile vs. SWG-mobile.

NB: Eric would win that race most likely. The CTS/CTV has more low-end torque and greater acceleration over the short haul. The Villainmobile will do 0-60 mph in about 6 seconds. But, that number is misleading. It does 0-45 in about 5 seconds. Then it really kicks in and hauls arse. Of course, the CTS/CTV is also about 1000lbs lighter than the Villainmobile. But unlike the CTS, a full-sized man like your Maximum Leader can engage in all manner of shenanigans in the backseat of the Villainmobile without feeling cramped or put out. A claim one cannot make about the CTS.

Next up, Minions will notice the “Blog Machine.” on the sidebar. Gordon was kind enough to set up your Maximum Leader a few weeks ago with an account. But your Maximum Leader putzed around and didn’t get around to configuring it until just now. It is up. And working great. Thanks to Gordon. Now if only others in the Blog Machine clique would add your Maximum Leader to their Blog Machines…. (Hint! Hint!)

Finally… Your Maximum Leader has been investigating a number of options concerning upgrading his blog. As many of you know, he is using Blogger to publish to his own web host. And he has a custom template. He is contemplating a major overhaul of how the site looks (read: he’s looking to make design changes beyond his abilities) and functions (read: he’s thinking of ditching Blogger and moving to some more powerful blogging tool). He’s been thinking about going to Movable Type. Then again, he’s also thought of WordPress. And as far as designers go, he was going to contact the wonderful Francey again. But he thought he also ought to check out Sekimori or Moxie. So many choices!

Do you know, my minions, the problem with all these designers? They all make cheery bright sites. Your Maximum Leader (in keeping with his autocratic tendencies and his love of medieval kings named Richard Plantagenet) was thinking of a blog template that had the look and feel of Westminster Hall. (Other - better - photos here, here, here, and here.) But that might be hard to capture… It is that wonderful feel to the hammer beam roof of Richard II that your Maximum Leader would like to capture. It is one of the most wonderful rooves in the world. With the angels, the wild boar, the roses. And that staircase with the window. It is a perfect medieval space.

Of course, how all that would translate into a template for a blog is beyond your Maximum Leader… Which is why your Maximum Leader needs to retain an artsy-type to help out. A web designer to play Michaelangelo to his Julius II. Someone o who would be Titian to his Charles V. A creative genius to be Raphael to his Cosimo de Medici.

If any one of his loyal readers has a suggestion as to good designers/blogging software they care to pass along, please e-mail your Maximum Leader: maxldr-blog * at * yahoo * dot * com.

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader loves New York politics. It is a rough and tumble world with no quarter given by anyone of any party. So it strikes your Maximum Leader as particularly interesting that the scions of two great political families are squaring up to run for New York Attorney General. Andrew Cumo and RFK Jr. are both looking at running in the Attorney General’s race.

The subplot here is even more interesting. Cumo has recently separated from RFK Jrs sister, Kerry. Doesn’t this sound like it could be fun?

Your Maximum Leader will hope for a Cumo (or other) victory in the Democratic Primary. He just cannot stand to listen to RFK Jr. RFK Jr’s voice sounds so strained and filled with concern that it is annoying. Cumo is a more vivacious speaker.

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader reads that the CEO of one of his favourite companies, Krispy Kreme, has been sacked.

Now, Scott Livengood has not been a particularly good sheppard for this company over the past few quarters. But, your Maximum Leader firmly believes that KK will make it out of these troubles okay. But your Maximum Leader must ask this question…

Do you think that there is probably some neat clause of Livengood’s contract that would allow him to get those golden delicious doughnuts at a discount (or free) for life? Your Maximum Leader would have negotiated for that being put in there were he Krispy Kreme’s CEO…

Have you ever had a Krispy Kreme doughnut? Your Maximum Leader’s mouth is watering and his arteries hardening just at the thought.

Yum.

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader is pleased to note that the Crack Young Staff has returned to blogging. And what a wonderful entry they present to us: The Morals of a Nation.

Your Maximum Leader must state for the record that he hasn’t read the “Personals” ina newspaper in, he suspects, 5 or more years. He has only visited a site like Match.com once - and that was to proof-read a profile that a good friend of his had written. (She wanted to make sure it didn’t make her sound too desperate. Or morally liberal.) But allow your Maximum Leader to state on the record that he had no idea those ads have gotten so racy! Really now. There are probably whole sections devoted to adultery!

Wow! Sorta makes one want to go and read the paper in the morning.

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader has been rather quiet of late. He has been spending quality time with his wee Villain most evenings when he would, otherwise, be blogging. Indeed, the wee bairn has gotten himself into a routine where he and his daddy like to lay on the sofa watching some tv or old movie (last night it was “The Seven Samurai”) until sleep overcomes him…

Anyho… All minions really ought to go to Col. Blimp’s site and read the ongoing discussion of capital punishment. Here is the link: ‘angin’s too bad for ‘em?, IV: response to Tom, Misspent, and the Maximum Leader. Follow all the links. Read all materials. This is one of the most thoughtful discussions of the subject that your Maximum Leader had read/particpated in. It is the type of highbrow discourse that gets your Maximum Leader all worked up.

He hopes to comment further soon.

Carry on.

You frivolous rich folk can keep your hummers, flat-screen televisions and Cayman Island condos.

If I win the lottery, I’m putting in an underground water line to the barn.

It’s -5 degrees windchill.

The hose is frozen solid.

The frost-free water spigot is a hundred yards from the barn.

The animals are drinking about 70 gallons of water a day. And about 10 gallons is thrown out as I chip off the ice twice a day.

Two five gallon buckets weigh about 80 pounds.

The frost-free water spigot is a hundred yards from the barn.

Seven trips carrying 80 pounds.

It’s -5 degrees windchill.

Screw your Gucci loafers, fancy jewelry, season tickets and subzero appliances. Give me water in the barn!

Sadie hammers the bio-fuel lobby.

Here’s another criticism:

The last thing we need to do is to give additional incentives to grain monoculture. Clean cultivation around corn already results in massive erosion annually. Imagine if economic factors brought marginal hillside land into production. The ol’ Mississippi just got a whole lot muddier.

I’m rooting for fuel cells. If only there was an efficient way to pluck the hydrogen out of the air…

Bill did some nice work with the statistical likelihood that my watch would be recovered. However, I would quibble with his variable a; probability of the raft capsizing at a particular point. Assuming that our raft had capsized at that point, he assumed that rafts capsizing at that point would be fairly frequent and assigned a variable of .25 to the value.

Actually, our raft did not capsize at that point. I must have, while paddling furiously, banged my wrist on the innertube, releasing the lock pin. In fact, we did not capsize at all.

I would wager that very few rafts run into problems that dump out the occupants. The occupants might lose the occasional oar, but they are big floaty things with a wide base. But lets be generous and say that 25% of rafting expeditions experience a catastrophic dunking during their trip. So we’ll leave a at .25, but rename it “chance of dunking.” The question is, where will the accident happen and how likely is it that it would happen in a particular point - we need a new variable — aa - likelihood of dunking at the exact location.

Setting aside Aristotle’s fox/rabbit “infinitely closing gap,” in reality there are a finite number of places that a raft might overturn. Let’s assign the area of overturning to be eight feet by eight feet - about the length of the raft. If a raft overturns, the people walking around to right it should step all around this area, and if the location coincides with the resting place of the watch, probably step on it. So, using this arbitrary benchmark, we now need to find the number of locations in which a dunking might occur.

Estimating the length of the trip is difficult. For a two hour trip with a drift rate of, say, 3 miles per hour, a raft would cover 6 miles. So that would be linear 31,680 feet - or 3,982.5 possible locations. Assuming that 90% of the trip is placid floating between the excitement of the rapids, eliminating 90% of the locations gives us 398.25 locations.

Linear locations.

Because rafts don’t follow down the river in the same exact path as all previous and future rafts. They meander side to side, limited only by the banks. If the average width of the James River over the length of the rafting route is 300 feet. We might exclude thirty feet on either side of the shoreline; you want to trend towards the middle to avoid running aground. This gives us (300-30-30)/8 width of raft = 30 side to side locations. Further assume that the patterns during the rapids (we have already eliminated the calm portions of the river), funnel the rafts into a few channels. So eliminate 90% of the side-to-side positions.

This gives us 398.25 linear locations and 3 side to side locations, for a total of 1194.25 possible locations for the raft to capsize. The watch is only at one of those locations. So, 1/1194.25 gives us a value for aa of .008367.

Of course, this positional reasoning would eliminate Bill’s “d” variable, doubling the chance of the watch being found.

Perhaps I’m guilty of “trying to get a certain answer.” I don’t think so. This exercise was solely because reading Bill’s reasoning had me chewing over the probabilities for the last couple of days.

It is probably irrational to attribute an unlikely occurrence to divine intervention: “God loves me because my wach was recovered.” One would be just as justified in attributing an unlikely negative event to divine retribution: “God hates me because I have throat cancer.”

Eh, whatever.

Thanks to Bill for providing some interesting intellectual diversion.

UPDATE: Actually, Skippy, God DOES hate you. And Bret Favre. But the rest of us are cool.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader is becoming cranky. Not cranky in the sense that Gordon is cranky. But cranky none the less.

What is up with The Hatemonger’s Quarterly today. It is Monday. Where is the newest update of the humble weblog by the Crack Young Staff? (Who are, b the way, 47% female. That same 47% dislikes being called “you guys.”)

What is up? Did they decide to take Martin Luther King, Jr. Day off? Great Jeezey Chreezey. What is this internet thingie coming to? (Or more accurately - To what is this internet thingie coming?)

Carry on.

If you don’t get the title, this post isn’t for you.

From today’s Washington Post:

50 Miles, 12 Hours and Desire
By Jonathan E. KaplanSpecial to The Washington Post Monday, January 17, 2005; Page C12

At 5 o’clock in the morning, more than 800 runners gathered in downtown Boonsboro, Md., in late November to start the John F. Kennedy 50-mile ultramarathon.

Started in 1962, the JFK 50-miler is the oldest ultramarathon in the nation. It starts with a nine-mile ascent to the Appalachian Trail and is followed by a six-mile descent over sharp rocks and slippery wet leaves.

The next 26 miles trace the gravelly flat C&O Canal along the Potomac River. If marathons start at Mile 20, a 50-miler begins at Mile 30. Even at this distance, my goals came down to minutes and seconds per mile.

I had run the first 16 miles in four hours. So much for finishing in 10 hours. It took me seven hours to run 30 miles. So much for breaking 11 hours. All that remained was to finish 50 miles in less than 12 hours.

Growing up and in college, I swam competitively. I was not very good, but the simplicity of the sport was appealing: choose a goal, train and rae. For several years in my twenties, I ran marathons and triathlons. In 2000, I finished the Hawaii Ironman Triathlon. In 2001, two weeks after Sept. 11, I ran a 50-mile race in Vermont’s mountains, but did not finish it.

Then, the training was a staple of my life. I loved my bikes and running shoes the way I loved playing with Legos as a kid. I loved being in the water, on a bike or running where nobody could bother you. Training and racing helped simplify my life by organizing it.

But I was not a professional and never would be. The time spent exercising started interfering with my career and maybe my marriage. Plus, after Sept. 11, endurance sports seemed trivial when so many had died and thousands of servicemen and women faced real, deadly adventure in Afghanistan and Iraq.

I sold my bikes and poured myself into my work. I tried to be a decent husband. I tried living the way I imagined emotionally well-adjusted people live, by exercising in moderation. I even tried other outlets for adventure, such as traveling to Iraq and Venezuela.

But the year had been tumultuous. My wife said she was unhappy being married because I had become self-absorbed. Reporting on Congress just wasn’t as exhilarating as it had been at first. So I turned to my old emotional crutch and decided to run the JFK.

The standard response when you tell someone you’re going to run 50 miles is always the same: “You’re crazy!” or “Are you insane?” But for me and others, training is a way to sort out feelings.
At least subconsciously, race day — Nov. 20 — was significant because it is the anniversary of my sister’s death in 1981. (The race memorializes President Kennedy, who was killed Nov. 22, 1963.)

If I was running from my past grief, I was not alone. I heard a woman tell someone she had “hooked up with a guy at my 10th-year high school reunion, got married, had kids, got divorced, and started running.”

A male runner talked about his failed marriage. The winner was quoted in The Washington Post saying that he started running after his relationship with a longtime girlfriend ended. As I regained my endurance while preparing for the race, I stopped caring what other people might think. This felt good! I lost 20 pounds, ate and slept better, and was more disciplined. I felt saner even if what I was doing was crazy.

But around Mile 30, I had my doubts as physical pain turned emotional despite the presence of my cheering wife and two friends. I placed several cell phone calls to other friends, but spent the next 14 miles battling to regain my composure from feeling hungry, sore and despondent.
Finally, with eight miles to go, I turned onto the road leading to the finish line. I had 60 minutes to break the 12-hour mark. In real life, at work, or in a relationship, it’s tough to push aside anguish or discomfort and home in on one goal. Out there, amid the rain, the grime and the fatigue, all I could do was to tap into that emotional pain lurking in me.

That combination of emotional and physical pain yields clarity. Tears welled up in my eyes. Yet I reeled off those miles faster than I had run all day. The fluorescent orange placards counted the miles. Six. Five. Four. Williamsport’s water tower emerged in the distance. Three. Two. One. With 600 meters left, I was running as hard as I could. Eleven hours and 52 minutes later, I hugged my wife and cried from relief.