Needless to say I don't believe in the Beast, His Mark, etc. I don't have the time nor inclination for delving into the symbolism of the Book of Revelations, much less to take it literally. But Gaia bless the good folks at Recognition Systems, Inc. for taking the concerns of their clientele seriously, and presenting them with a reasonable and, I hope, reassuring response.

As in painting, so in words, there is a power that transcends our experience of life, a power that can doubly lift us to the sacred and mock us for the profane. So it is with Asher Lev.

My Name Is Asher Lev was one of the few works from high school English that I looked back upon fondly. For years my searches through Half Price Books have been surprisingly without reward, but at last I thought simply to borrow a copy.

"Vacationing" in the Dallas area, Dinosaur Valley State Park near Glen Rose, TX, is one of the few decent public properties around. Started driving out there on Tuesday, nearly called it a rain-out, but after heavenly fajitas at Taco Cabana, felt great and pushed through the storms. The river was surprisingly low but the hiking was good. My camera batteries were freshly charged, but apparently that doesn't mean much anymore — only managed to get about 10 photos in before it conked out.

Somehow it had previously escaped me (maybe its a new thing? maybe I don't pay all that much attention to stuff like this?), CBS now has episodes of Star Trek: The Original Series, remastered, in high definition. Just enjoyed Daggers of the Mind. Well, enjoyed in a way that only a sci-fi-starved non-TV watcher (usually) can. Granted it wasn't great, but at least it looked good in HD :-).

Just watched Nomad (The Warrior). Not terrible, though it perpetuates the white-guy-must-lead and minority-guy-must-follow trope. Made me wish we had watched the terrible but campy Van Helsing again instead.

After SNL we stumbled across a Star Trek: TOS episode, one in which Kirk is split into two personalities by a transporter malfunction. I've probably seen this, but don't remember it. I came back in the room roughly 10 minutes in, so missed those crucial intro scenes. When I came in, a blonde yeo(wo)man had smeared lipstick and was explained to Spock and the Captain that the Captain had attacked her, just look at the scratches on his face. But there were none, and thus they realized there must be "an imposter" aboard.

A little bit bored, I went looking for any web links to my short-term life in physics, for inclusion in a tech post on web server configuration for dummies. I didn't find what I was looking for — the University of Texas finally took down my old website — but I did discovered that I've been published. And no one bothered to tell me.

We've been big fans of the Burton Batman films and the first one from Nolan, so we had high expectation going into the theater for The Dark Knight today. We were not let down. I won't be the first to observe that the violence was quite indirect (thankfully), that the pacing was strange, and that the human/social analysis was fascinating without slapping you in the face.